You haven’t just awoken to a world stricken by disaster, but to a Dunia entirely removed from anything you can recall. There's very little about the world that you can remember, and in the time since the calamity, you’ve had time to familiarise yourself with your immediate surroundings. However, without any proper maps to be found, very little is known of what lies beyond.

Your group of survivors has subsisted in a gargantuan, sprawling city, which was the first place you became familiar with after losing your memories. Many of the buildings have been ruined or completely reduced to rubble. The section of the city that avoided destruction has been converted into shelter for a population of around ten thousand. Streets are lined with shelters botched together from salvage, while space in the ruins that still stand is squabbled over regardless of structural integrity. The city’s buildings were found deserted and covered with overgrowth. They were soon plundered for the food and tools that make up the mainstay of your supplies (alongside whatever you can hunt).

You’ve learned this city was called Monument once - the signs on the walls have told you that much, at least. What you’ve found is in line with your vague memories of human habitation: residents were packed into tall buildings to live, and were sent to work in factories, shops and the like. Many of the towers still have the smashed remains of glass bridges or other vestigial structures jutting out from the sides. It’s hard to see the character of a place when much has been swept away by catastrophe, but through the wreckage you can see glimpses of ambition, if only in the ornate craftsmanship of the facades, or in the way some ruins still reach towards the sky. Monument is a shadow of the grandeur it seems to have aspired to, but most of its occupants are just grateful to have its outer wall between them and the world outside.

The rest is a mystery. None of the streets are familiar and no buildings are homely. There’s nothing in this city that you can recognize or remember being personally connected with.

The meeting room
Remarkably, this building seems to have hardly been damaged by the disaster, despite those around it being flattened. Looking through the windows, you can see that it consists of a single, open-plan room big enough to accommodate a large crowd (along with sufficient automated security features to control one). Clocks mounted to the walls display a countdown for all to see, and more of them can be found elsewhere in the city. For all this room’s apparent importance, nobody is offering up what will happen once the time reaches zero…

The reservoirs
Monument's water distribution system apparently involved several enormous water towers dotted around the city. You've been able to harness the intact towers for water, but some of the towers have been destroyed in the disaster and have left the surrounding area flooded.

The city wall
A long, curved wall runs around Monument’s southern boundary. The bottom of the wall remains intact, but much of it appears to have been smashed down. Despite its disrepair, it still looks like it could be used to fend off a would-be attacker.

The old city
Further towards the north of the city, the buildings look much more dilapidated – what’s left of them, that is. They appear to be large glass houses, but with walls of varying opacity. They are devoid of resources, as opposed to the city's newer buildings, so scavengers haven't spent much time looking around.

The Corrugated Courtyard
More commonly referred to as just the Courtyard, this enclosed square has been covered with the survivors’ makeshift shelters, whose sheet metal has given the square its new nickname. Many a survivor can be found huddled around the Courtyard’s nightly bonfire for warmth. More recently, some survivors have taken to using it as a rudimentary trading post.

The Trident
The tallest surviving building in the city, the Trident has been named for its two peripheral spires jutting out from the main structure. It’s also one of the most opulent, making it a highly contested shelter. It’s currently occupied by a gang of ne'er-do-wells who were willing to fight for the privilege of staying there.

The land past the city’s outskirts is a desolate waste, with dark clouds constantly looming overhead. There’s almost no sign of live vegetation. The grass and flowers have all withered, and entire forests have been consumed by mysterious wildfires, leaving fields of ash underfoot. Granted, the wilderness can be traversed, but it’s so inhospitable that few have decided to strike it out on their own instead of making camp in Monument. With the starved bodies of those unable to survive the disaster still being found, one might easily be discouraged from such a course of action.

There are no signs of life outside Monument. A few hamlets are visible in the distance (see below), but without having looked at them closely, you don't know if anyone's living there. Horror stories have spread around survivors’ camps of people driven mad by the disaster and living like savages in the wilderness. Unfortunately, there have been no reports that the majority deem worth believing. Bizarrely, there are no roads leading from Monument to the rest of civilization. Some are already wondering if the city is in fact the human race’s last stronghold.

Naturally, some consider it their duty to find survivors from further afield and cooperate. With Monument struggling to support its current population, others say finding land capable of sustaining life could unearth vital resources in the form of food and medicine. The question of what happened to Dunia in the first place also remains unanswered. There is a growing consensus among Monument’s population that they should search for hardy individuals who are willing to take on the burden of exploration and address these problems.

The following sketch-map roughly depicts the city and its environs. It depicts the limited efforts made to explore the wilderness so far, and therefore contains as much information as one could be expected to know. Walking across Monument would take several days, with a similar length of time needed to reach the edge of the map.

1. The ground becomes hillier towards the north, with mountains in the distance. This region has been sparsely settled.
2. The upper course of a river runs down the hills and past Monument. Its lower course runs to the east. Further away, more buildings are dotted around the plains on the other side of the river.
3. A series of caves have been found to the south-east. They haven’t been properly explored yet.
4. Plains lie to the south and the west. It’s been reported that there are still some wildfires burning in the distance. These areas appears to have been the most densely forested of the nearby regions prior to the disaster.
5. A canyon runs north-east to south-west, with the north-east end terminating near the city.