How you get in
Arrival Contact
First rule of the Slums: don't gawk at the signage, you'll draw a drone. Wrench doesn't introduce himself twice — prove you can walk Arrival Alley without getting made, and he'll point you toward Tinker.
Supply Theft
Sentinel patrols have been stripping Market Ruin of anything with copper in it. Tinker isn't asking anyone to fight a war over scrap metal — just to take back what's already theirs.
Patrol Culling
The Tenement Blocks are still lived in — families the Combine hasn't taken yet. Old Sam doesn't want the Rusher patrols scared off. He wants them gone, so somebody's kid comes home tonight.
Dead-Drop Route
Quieter than killing, and it matters more: walk a courier route clean, sewer approach to the checkpoint's own front step, without getting seen. Lose either drop and the resistance starts over somewhere worse.
Checkpoint Strike
Everything before this was so the moment could happen without being a suicide run. Drop the Heavy at the gate, and the route opens for real. Someone's been waiting on the other side longer than you've been in the Slums.
Nobody in the Combine ever earned their share — they took it, logged it as a requisition, and called the difference "efficiency."
DIVIDEND is the word for what's owed once you stop asking permission to collect it. Every quest, every checkpoint taken, every route reopened is one more thing the resistance gets back. That's the fantasy — not saving the world, taking back what's already yours.
No mustache to twirl
The Meridian Combine doesn't have a supervillain. It has a quota, a checkpoint schedule, and a requisition form — and that's exactly what makes it worse. Nobody in the Crown had to be cruel on purpose. The system does the cruelty for them, automatically, at scale.
Rules the Crown by spreadsheet. Has never set foot in the Slums and would call that a strength.
The Combine's ground enforcement. Patrols, checkpoints, quota collection — the fight you actually see.
Not seen yet. Crown Ascendant's final defense — the flying fortress above it all — answers to one name.
Four stops on the route
Full press kit →The real ground the quest chain above runs through, in early concept art.
You know how they get in. Time to see how it plays.
See How It Plays