Northwest (Northwestern) Reaches
The Northwest (also Northwestern) Reaches is a region with indistinct boundaries designated by the MPD, indicating that they have scouted the area and have an ongoing presence but no settlements.
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Though the Northwest Reaches boundaries aren't fixed, it is widely agreed that it covers a large area both to the north and west of Rivertown North, stretching from the shores of Lake Lawrence westward until it becomes the less inhabited Western Wastes.
The area now known as the Northwest Reaches was home to several manufacturing plants and working class neighborhoods. The area was one of the most dangerous in Rivertown due to the crushing poverty of many of its residents especially as the the global economy dipped from recession to depression. Crime was rampant and race riots broke out on a regular basis.
Ironically, this section of the Greater Rivertown Area is home to the greatest number of sub-labs as private corporations and government projects took advantage of the low cost of real estate and lack of public scrutiny. The MPD frequently send reconnaissance teams into the Northwest Reaches in search of labs that are still operating.
It is often remarked that many of the neighborhoods in the Northwest Reaches looked worse before the apocalypse than areas in Rivertown North and Rivertown Central look after it, and that the living conditions there make the Grudow District of Summerland look pleasant.
Like most of the city, large portions of the Northwest Reaches burned during the rioting, and many businesses pulled out long before the city's collapse, leaving many buildings as empty husks.
In addition to the laboratories, the Northwest Reaches also have an inordinate amount of weapons caches and drug warehouses before society's collapse, including two major rundown labs. The scholarly-minded view the Northwest Reaches as a new kind of lawless frontier, full of promise and danger awaiting those eager (or foolish) enough to explore it.
The Northwestern Reaches are sparsely inhabited but the residents of this area are widely regarded as being some of the best armed and most hostile people in the Greater Rivertown Area. Lone travelers wandering into this area are almost certain to lose their lives, and even trained squadrons of MPD guards traversing the area do so with trepedation.
The Rivertown Compendium draws from the much larger Rivertown Chronicles, a wide assortment of personal narratives and catalog entries of people, places, and things.