What’s up with the City?

Loredump. September 2023

What do we really know about the City the characters inhabit? Aside from it being located right next to the Zone, not much. And to be fair, the song series format doesn’t leave a lot of room for exploration.

But it’s an interesting place in its own right. Today we’ll learn a little bit about its history, life, and how being right next to the strangest area of the planet has affected the lives of its 400,000 inhabitants. Let’s dive right in.

View of the City’s edge in winter. Unexciting.

Where is the City located?

The City has no concrete location: it can be placed on almost any territory within Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine. Despite a lot of the realia and places within it being drawn from my own lifetime in Minsk, it’s not meant to represent it specifically.

The City is part of a larger totalitarian state. Housing hundreds of thousands of citizens, it used to be the largest settlement in the vicinity of ЦКР-5 (TsKR-5), a closed town declassified after its own destruction and the emergence of the Zone.

Closed city TsKR-5. In reality, the military town Knyaze-Volkonskoye

Who lives in the City?

The City is mostly inhabited by people of various slavic nationalities. The main spoken language is Russian, though there are folks who know and communicate in other slavic languages. The government treats those who do so with suspicion, so it’s not common practice.

Smoke above the City. In reality, Nekrasovka, Moscow

The majority of people living on the periphery of the town are employed in factories. A significant industrial centre before the Zone’s emergence, it remains a stable producer of vehicles, electronics, and environmental waste.

However, the proximity to the Zone and the massive research centre have attracted a lot of scientific talent and entrepreneurs to the place. The latter usually choose banditism or smuggling as their business model. Unsurprisingly, the crime rate is high.

Most of the population, adult and child alike, has had some contact with gangs. It’s not uncommon for kids to actively want to go into banditism, as it’s seen as one of the few avenues for achieving some sort of financial stability.

How is the City affected by anomalies?

The City is no stranger to bizarre meteorological, metaphysical, and otherwise logic-defying events. One day it can rain tar. Another day the air will smell a little sweet. Another day a dead pet will rise from its grave. Another day a street will distort, then go back to normal. Another day everyone born on May 11th will cough up ammonia.

Sky anomaly. In reality, a mirage above Jiangxi

There are at least a dozen anomalous events every year. It’s generally believed they occur because of precipitation, affected particles and/or artefacts travelling outside of the Zone, as well as City dwellers unknowingly ingesting anomalous particles into their bodies.

Few environmental anomalies outside the Zone are permanent or dangerous, but some do require containment. On paper, public access to any life-threatening anomaly needs to be cut off as soon as it becomes known. In practice, places deemed dangerous often get little more than a police ribbon and a couple of warning signs around them.

What are some restricted anomalous areas within the City?

The Lazurny (Azure) Pool

The most notable one in the context of PAFL itself is the pool KT inhabited during her two weeks on the run. Abandoned, but neither guarded nor fenced off, the building had all its entrances and windows welded shut and left at that.

Mosaic by the main pool

The reason for its closure was the main pool’s basin becoming what one could only call a bottomless pit. Its water cannot be drained or pumped out, and everything alive entering it disappears underneath, never to be seen again. Only pieces of plywood, garbage, sports and research equipment now float atop the surface.

The Anomalous Forest

As far as less relevant places are concerned, the workshop Ivan and Arthur work at overlooks a large restricted area just on the edge of town. It’s part of a bigger forest that fell victim to the local wind rose: a lot of clouds coming from the Zone have rained various suspicious liquids on it.

As a result, the treeline became ridiculously uneven, with some parts looking lush with greenery, some being inappropriately naked, some standing pale and sickly, and some even emanating a faint glow come nightfall. There is little official information about the dangers of local flora and fauna, but more than enough urban legends. Though, most seem to agree that eating anything from the pale zone results in awful diarrhoea.

Affected trees. In reality, the Drunken Forest in the Curonian Spit

A popular theory for why such areas are never cleared or properly restricted (aside from money pocketing) is that the facility uses them for resources.

For instance, a pine tree whose needles cause people to develop tumours can be a valuable asset for various research, medical or otherwise. Or take a small stretch of an impossibly warped landscape – that one can be a great place to test the physical attributes of anomalous objects. Would be a waste to make those things nearly impossible to access, no?

What about the artefact trade?

As was stated multiple times before, unregistered possession of anomalous artefacts is strictly against the law. The only exceptions are the anomalous souvenirs produced and sold in the Facility and shops around the city (small floating toys, balls of glowsmoke, standing needles).

Sorting of artefacts (batteries) in False Disposition

Actual artefacts are acquired and sold illegally by stalkers. They are usually traded to either gangs, police, or government officials who, in turn, resell them to faraway regions or abroad, where they go for an even higher price.

This is a large part of why crime continues to flourish in the City: the underground trade is simply too profitable for everyone involved, including those who are supposed to fight against it.

Where do the main characters live?

All of our main characters live on the edge of town, in an area that’s relatively close to the Facility located just outside of the City. The rough map of the main locations would look something like this:

Approximate map of the area. Apartment blocks sure look crazy from above

Yura and Sanya live about 15 minutes away from each other with Sanya’s house, in turn, being a 10-15 minute walk away from the Molodzyozhny club. Following the road South from Molodzyozhny will lead you to the orphanage, Ivan’s house, and his dad’s workshop overlooking the anomalous forest.

Following the same road North will have you pass by Nikita’s house and eventually lead to Olya’s – though, she lives relatively far, being around 35 minutes away from Sanya’s place by foot. Yana lives even farther, in the city centre way to the West.

Going to the East will lead you to a more forested area. That’s where the abandoned Lazurny pool is located. It’s also where buses and railroads travel through to get to the Facility located right on the border of the City and the Zone.

The estacade in False Disposition

The estacade where Sanya catches up with Yura in False Disposition and, subsequently, the meeting spot with Olya and Nikita are also located off the little map (sorry): they're to the East of the orphanage, next to the train tracks.

The road to both the Facility and the Zone has plenty of buildings on the way (industrial and otherwise), but getting to the border checkpoint by foot from, say, Yura’s house would take at least an hour and a half. It’s not somewhere you wander to by accident.

***

I think that’s about all I can say about the silly town! Again, it’s a shame I don’t get a lot of chances to have the characters move around it more, there’s lots of potential for fun little stories.

Maybe I’ll do a side story comic sometime… Whenever I’m done with the prequel one lol

In any case, hope this was enough info to satisfy whatever curiosities you had about the place the gang inhabits. Toodles:)