The Orbitfall Craterbelt
The Orbitfall Craterbelt
"Ash above, fire below—the sky came home in pieces."
Overview
Spanning dozens of miles across the northern reaches of the Sky Remnants, the Orbitfall Craterbelt is a vast and chaotic landscape formed from the catastrophic reentry of orbital debris during the Fall. The region is pockmarked with massive craters, smoldering impact trenches, and jagged fields of twisted satellite husks, creating a biome where Earth’s final war with the stars quite literally crashed back to the surface.
Environment & Terrain
- Craters & Scorched Earth: The terrain here is treacherous and uneven, dominated by overlapping craters rimmed with fused black glass and scorched stone. The air carries a faint ozone tang, and walking through the belt feels like moving through a broken celestial graveyard.
- Irradiated Micrometeor Fields: Countless shards of irradiated metal and pre-war ceramics lie buried beneath the surface. Even minor disturbances can trigger chain reactions—popping sounds as pressure pockets rupture or glimmering arcs of static discharges skipping across the ground.
- Gravity Pockets: The collision of exotic tech and experimental graviton cores has fractured natural laws in parts of the Craterbelt. Pockets of low or altered gravity cause objects—and people—to float unpredictably or fall sideways. Some areas allow leaps of 60 feet or more; others trap wanderers in looping descents.
Hazards
- Magnetic Storms: Twisting vortices of electromagnetic energy sweep across the land like sandstorms, lifting metallic debris into the air. These can become “sky mines,” hovering shards that spin and spark until detonated by motion or heat.
- Radiation Zones: Many craters are still hot, not in temperature—but in rads. The deeper the crater, the older and more powerful the core tech within it likely was… and the more dangerous it is to explore.
- Orbital Wraiths: Spectral entities made from fragmented AI and lingering satellite signals. They appear during storms and mimic voices from the past, luring scavengers to their deaths.
Points of Interest
- Crater Sigma-7: The deepest and oldest impact site, where a pre-Fall military intelligence satellite crashed. Rumors say it houses a still-active vault filled with tactical data, maps, and prototype weapon schematics—guarded by drones whose last orders were to "defend against surface infiltration at all costs."
- The Halo Pit: A perfectly circular crater lined with floating, luminous rings of unknown origin. Gravity is reversed here—entering the pit launches you upward into an invisible ceiling of pressure. Some believe it was once a launch tube, now inverted by warping tech.
- The Skygrave Spires: Towers of wreckage fused by reentry heat into surreal, cathedral-like formations. Pilgrims of the Red Bloom and scavenger factions often light fires here, believing they are communing with “Heaven’s Bones.”
Inhabitants & Factions
- Scrapstalkers: Rogue tech-hunters equipped with insulated armor and anti-rad gear. Most work alone or in small, desperate crews. They value data cores, rare alloys, and functional weapon systems, even at the cost of their lives.
- The Cinderclade (Scouts): Though primarily based in the Ember Wastes, Cinderclade scavengers sometimes brave the Craterbelt in sand skiffs or solar gliders, drawn to the melted bones of the sky.
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