The Overpass Stack
A five-level collapsed interchange at the middle of the district. The Smiling Man is painted under it.
Overpass Fields
Meridian's expressway deck, the town under it, and the gate to the Deadband.
The deck
Mapped The streets are laid out in the build. No street fight runs here yet: only the Wick has one.
- Kind
- Field zone
- Who runs it
- Meridian Security
- Combat
- Designed Street fights are designed, not built
- Landmark
- The five-level Overpass Stack and the Watchtower
- Loop station
- None
Overpass Fields is built around an elevated expressway deck, and the fighting happens on it, under it and off the side of it. Around the deck are the five-level Overpass Stack, the Spill running glowing with breach runoff, a Meridian Watchtower, and the gate to the Deadband on the north seam.
Meridian Security holds it. The Watchtower is a forward post on a collapsed interchange, above a linear town of tarps and container conversions that exists under a road. The expressway's dead lamp rows light up as the street's heat climbs.
Redline runners get their long straights along the deck.
Stack, Spill and tower
The Smiling Man
A mural of Halcyon from before he took the licence, painted by request. People leave things at it. Some of it is mockery and some is devotion, and it is hard to tell which.
The Spill
A channel running glowing with breach runoff. The Spill Steps are where people sit and watch it and are told not to. Parade streamer weights from the Kindling still come out of its grates.
The Watchtower
A Meridian forward post. Its sweeps are punctual, and the Underdeck Row's forty stalls have wheels now.
The Deadband gate
On the north seam. Past it no Meridian writ runs. See the Deadband.
The Levelman and the Formality
The Levelman is the set of clearing rakes at Sluice Gate 4 that keeps the Spill's channel level. What it clears from the channel is whatever is in the channel.
The Formality is a checkpoint arm that a scar took when it opened beneath it. It holds whoever it stops and never finishes with them.
Both are Bleedthrough.
Under the road
Fewer people than elsewhere, and mostly under things. Life is organised around the Watchtower's sweeps, which are punctual, and the Spill's glow, which is not. Traffic runs along the deck's underside.
On the walls
Observation post. Sweeps are scheduled. Do not congregate at the footing.
WE WERE THERE TOO
THEY WATCH THE ROAD
"If it moves, you call it. You don't fix it and then call it.
If it's still moving at shift end, nobody goes up. Somebody stays."
The vertical fight, as designed
Designed
The fight here is meant to be vertical: Meridian Security squads on the deck, in the air and beneath it, with the heat climbing to tier 4. A Meridian contract board and the Deadband gate are on the north side.
Under the tower
- The Watchtower's commander runs the sweeps to the minute and has cut discharges in the sector.
- A warrant officer on the apron reads the Writ aloud to the Legend it is served on. GAVEL is the step past that.
- A mural warden works under the stairs, repainting what the sweeps leave.
The state, from above
- Meridian Security holds Overpass Fields, so this is where the state hunts you. How Meridian Security fights come in waves as the heat climbs: Peacekeepers, Writ Drones, patrol lanes and Stinger flights.
- At tier 4 the enforcer is GAVEL, who reads a writ aloud at volume and then serves it. That fight is designed and not built.
- Bleedthrough constructs wait in the channels and at the checkpoints, doing their old jobs.
