Sector 13

Here be dragons. Poor, unemployed dragons.

Sector 13 isn't spoken of in polite society. It's a festering, ugly sore in the post-modern landscape of humanity's greatest city, an abandoned slum of old broken down buildings and trash-strewn alleys. After one of the most cataclysmic bankrupcys that Megacorpolis has ever seen, Sector 13 was left to rot, locked away behind high walls and scrubbed social media to be ignored and forgotten. It has since become a place of refuge for all manners of misfits, rebels, luckless corporate drones, or those ground down by the corporate machine and left as broken husks.
Those who live in Sector 13 mirror its condition - they've both been broken and abandoned by the world, left with nothing but each other.

The Bad Side Of Megatown

Once a prosperous and integral part of Megacorpolis and home to countless powerful corporations, Sector 13 is now a slowly rotting corpse. The catastrophy that made it unprofitable still marr it, from bomb craters to bullet holes, and worse. Entire regions of Sector 13 are uninhabitable due to lingering chemical or biological weapons deployed to cull it, even decades later. There's even rumors of live nuclear weapons still ticking away somewhere in Sector 13, waiting to go off.
Before it all went to Hell, Sector 13 was meant to be the latest and greatest. It was supposed to take aspects from other aspects of Megacorpolis and refine them in a single place, to show the world and the city what waited for them in the future. Lets hope they were wrong.

Roadtrip Through Sector 13

From bombed-out skyscrapers to cracked avenues, Sector 13 has it all. Lakes of poison, overgrown laboratoties, abandoned offices, and sprawling supermarkets all give residents that pictoresque post-apocalyptic vibe they're now forced to live with.

by Midjourney

Echo Plaza

Once the center of the sector, Echo Plaza was an immense commercial district, with more shops and ads then you could shake a very profitable stick at, it's now little more then a blasted hellscape. Glass from millions of windows cover the central portion of the plaza like sand in a desert, surrounded by hollow buildings.
It's a popular destination for scavengers of all types, despite decades of being picked over.

The Blasthole

A crater over two-hundred-meters wide and deep enouh to crack into Megacorpolis Sewer System, the blasthole is.. Well, a hole, made by one hell of a blast. Many of the surrounding buildings have since collapsed into the crater, making it an unstable and dangerous place to be.
Only the Computer knows if the explosion started the war, or ended it.

The Dump

Reasoning that no one will notice a little extra toxic waste in Sector 13, the 'Dump' has become a place for corporations to dispose of all manners of unwanted things.
Rejected experiments, garbage, unwanted employees, genetic abominations against gods and man all get hurled out into this once-gentrified residential district.

The Scar

The Scar is a long, winding trail throughout Sector 13 of buildings razed to their foundations, bridges collapsed, roads shattered, and obstacles blown apart. It bisects the Sector like a wound, dipping well into the sewers below at several point.
For residents and explorers, the Scar is about as close to a highway as you're going to get.

Seraphim Park

The personal pet project of one of the Sector's chief investors, Seraphim park housed countless exhibts of wild life and offered adventuring tours.
Now, the cages are broken and the exhibits run free and feral, claiming a substantial part of Sector 13 for themselvse. Worse, some of them have figured out how to use guns.

by Midjourney

Respite

Respite is the only thing that comes close to a settlement within Sector 13, the only real place of some sort of organized governance. Located deep inside Sector 13 and far away from prying corporate eyes, Respite is home to all manner of misfits and malcontents. Many chipless non-citizens end up here too, a lot having committed no greater crime than being born to parents down on their luck or without the resources to buy their way into citizenship. It's a rough and tumble kind of place, surviving through scavenging and crime, but at least there's no cannibals.
Oh yeah, sorry - there's roaming band of crazed cannibals out there in Sector 13. You should watch out for those.

Who Lives Here Anyway?

Besides the crazed cannibals and Respite, Sector 13 is home to countless little gangs and cults. These are people either run out from the city proper, or who squat in Sector 13 to try and lay-low. Corporate personel on the run, movie stars looking to get away from the cameras, or freed Raffleraptor are just some of the many different types you might find around here. It's a place for people who're either looking to get away, who's gotten away, or who someone got away from everyone. This stew of despair and resentment breeds all manner of revolutionaries who seek the strike back against the city and the corporations that wronged them. Every now and then, they do, blame starts flying around about how someone could've let this happen, and disgraced corpers are banished into Sector 13 once the retalitory bombs have stopped falling. Well, usually before that.
Besides that, Sector 13 seem all kinds of visitors. Tourists come here on guided trips as a sort of morbid dark tourism thing, or what you might call 'hunting expeditions'. It isn't really murder if they aren't citizens, you see. Scavengers plunge into Sector 13, looking for anything shiny they might be able to sell, or some sort of corporate relic that they can auction off. The most valuable of these are artifacts of dead franchises, things that had their heart and soul (and production/distribution centers) in Sector 13.
Corps go here too, for all manner of reasons, but we'll get to that.

Getting To That

The truth is that the Megacorps allow Sector 13 to be the way it is because it serves their purpose. That isn't to say Sector 13 isn't a festering hellhole, but some of the more sensational claims about nuclear weapons and biochemical residue are made up to drum up interest - and fear. Nor is it really all that secret, though corporations sure like to pretend it is. Sector 13-related merch and services are on sale at your local vendor and/or digital retail site, ranging from artifacts from the ruined sector to trips there.
For now, no one really wants to divert ther energy and money need to rebuild Sector 13 and so it rots, with corporations gnawing on the corpse like maggots. As soon as the profits of that dry up, Sector 13 will be razed to the ground along with its citizens, buried deep, and remade in a fresh, corporate image.
Until then, here's some of the things they use for it now!

Tourism!

Far from being a deterrent, danger is a marketing ploy. The possibility of dying sells to a certain section of the population, while the fascination with post-apocalypse has always been with us. Visiting the end of the world and so close to home, it's a deal many can't resist. Entire live-action roleplaying group book conventions at the edge of Sector 13 to roleplay post-apocalytic stuff and only occasionally get attacked by Sewer-Gators or the like.
Other, less savory folk like the WeekendWarriors Corp go into Sector 13 on what can only be called hunting expeditions. If hunting in Gaia or the Sahara Nature Reserve isn't enough, the beasts of Sector 13 provide a different kind of lethal thrill. The non-citizens of Sector 13 are fair game too, because we all know rich people would if they could.

Fear-paganda!

Despite claims to the contrary, finding information about Sector 13 is pretty easy. It's just hard enough to become a intriguing puzzle but not so hard that consumers can't get there, all while giving the appearance of being forbidden knowledge, Things They Don't Want You To Know.
In truth, the corporations want you to know and want you to be afraid. Sector 13 looms large in people's imagination as a terrifying place that could come for themselves, so they better submit to the latest round of surveillance or corporate crack-down. If don't, who knows - maybe we'll be Sector 13'd next.
Meanwhile, radicals in Sector 13 unwittingly help the corporate propaganda machine. Every terrorist act they perform allows the corporations to point and say, "see?" before they tighten the vice again.

Disposal

Getting rid of toxic waste or failed experiment can be costly. There's all manner of "correct procedures" and "centuries of half-life" that has to be considered. Sector 13 offers a lucrative and tempting alternative, which is to just drop it off there and pretend it doesn't exist. It's become a dark-op industry all of its own, a mix of corps trying to bust each other for doing it and then do it themselves.
Not every product really goes the way it should, either. Some flop so spectacularly bad that the corps would rather everyone forget it was ever a thing. There are entire landfills of failed merchandise and doomed franchises out in Sector 13, failed prototypes, or even unsuccessful dinosaurs types. Some of these sites become wholly new ecosystems in their own right, home to all kinds of novel forms of life formed by unpredictable reactions between all the things dumped in there.

Good thing that's never last to any unintended consequences or anything!

by Midjourney

Experimentation & Product Testing

Sector 13, with its non-citizen population and low property value, is a perfect place for corps to test and perfect all manner of products. From hunting down scavengers to test cosmetics on them, to seeing just how big of a boom the latest Blast-O-Matic might make, Sector 13 has something - or someone - for every corp. When they need to try something that they wouldn't even do on an Intern, Sector 13's lost and damned population is right there.
All kinds of products get a test run in Sector 13, from food to guns or gene-therapy treatments and cybernetics. Sometimes, Corps will arm seperate groups in the Sector with experimental equipment and see who wins. It makes for a real great time for everyone that, once more, has no potential for unintended consequences.

by Midjourney

So come on down to Sector 13!
Go on an adventure, watch skyscrapers crumble and the monuments we build become naught but dust. Experience the thrill of desperately scavenging for supplies against the background noise of a geiger counter. Run from mutants and cannibals, or fight the good fight by going on a sponsored terrorist hunt.
And remember: terms and conditions apply