There’s always a haze in the air, a constant acrid smell from either the occasional wisps of vocanic ash from “Smokin’ Rainier” or the vapors of toxins bubbling to the surface. You only get used to it as your smell receptors callous over. Aztlan has nothing on air quality compared to Puyallup. Then there is the silence. Granted, most of the population is gathered in urban pockets here and there, but besides that, there’s no constant electrical hum, no bustling traffic, no flashy, gimmicked advertisements holo-cast from every street corner. Here you are at the crossroads of E and Z Street. No, not Easy Street. Puyallup has been designated by law enforcement as Class E and Class Z neighborhoods, where it’s easier on the paperwork to just shoot first. We’re the overlooked, the SINless, the outcast; no one is going to any effort to get our attention nor care about our demographic. Big corporations aren’t investing time or products in Puyallup, hence the Silence.
The Matrix is a joke, a patchwork of old hosts, pirated LTG hardlines, and a hodgepodge of wireless devices that may or may not be there on a given day. While it was rough in the old days to hack from, the Matrix network from the barrens is endearingly called the Briar Patch, as you may get dumped if you don’t know the landscape.
In the absence of law enforcement, tribal gangs and organized crime divide and control various urban parts of this district. Local government mainly stays in their lane, which generally means downtown Puyallup, though work is prioritized according to bribes offered. Every freeway that borders the district screams not to take an exit into Puyallup. xGuide warns drivers with a stern notice that it cannot help you within the district, which is pretty much true given that any streetlight or road charger has been cannibalized years if not decades ago, leaving crumbling asphalt barely recognizable as a road. Oh, and word to the wise - if your car suddenly has xGuide and tells you how to get out, don’t follow; if you’re lucky, it’s some gang wanting your vehicle for parts.
Outside those urban pockets, crumbling infrastructure is being reclaimed by vegetation tortured and twisted by the toxic soil in poetic vengeance. You have ash fields and lava flows, and parts of what was the Puyallup river are thick with sludge and mud geysers spewing a steaming cocktail that can melt your face off six different ways. Helicopter tours are available. It’s a no-man’s land where you have to protect what you have from pretty much everything. There’s always swarms of quakes, more so since the Twins. The locals have gotten used to the occasional rattle. Science-brains think it’s magma movements like Yellowstone. Magic brains think it’s bad mojo... like Yellowstone. Maybe they are both right.
People of Puyallup live a hard life, but they are not all bad—look at how many have clawed their way out. Polite people consider Puyallup a melting pot of metahumans and culture, but in reality, it’s primarily a steaming pile of refuse. Since 2009, you’ve had displaced NAN internment camps followed by people displaced by the NAN with a little volcanic eruption in between, then metahuman quarantine camps followed by the Night of Rage. Decades of miserable people with nowhere to go came into Puyallup. But it didn’t stop there. Layers of undesirable, petty criminals, and the Ork Underground have been dropped here as if it were a cheaper than prison. And it’s not just the Seattle metroplex that does this. The bordering nations think Puyallup is a perfect place to make it somebody else’s problem. Tír bastards have been throwing people out because of heritage or caste for decades. And as they say: At least it's not Redmond.
