Gran Veya

Once the proud capitol city of an entire region, Gran Veya has fallen into steep disrepair and overgrowth after the attack of a rampaging giant monster. Now a hunting ground rather than a hub, its remains are known simply as the Veya Ruins. Some of its world famous amenities and sprawling architecture are still standing today, a true testament to the hard work and skill of the city craftsmen who built it. Unfortunately it's far from habitable now, not only crumbling and unsafe, but inhabited by all manner of monster. Creatures large and small swooped in after Gran Veya's fall, eager to use the abandoned structures as shelter from the elements. A select few have even begun to adapt to living here specifically, utilizing the manmade structures and debris in strange and unique ways.

Environments
Being the remnants of a city, the Veya Ruins are split up not by regions or biomes, but by districts. Though they're no longer marked and occupied, it's still easy enough to tell what's what thanks to the standing architecture and the types of monsters that live there.

The Market District
This winding network of manmade ravines was once a bustling marketplace known all across the world. Now its streets are all but empty, the wide brick roads warped into rolling hills and sunken ditches by the ravages of time. Tall grasses and hardy shrubs reach up from the spaces between, providing sparse foliage for wandering herbivores and nest-building birds. The streetside shops on either side are almost all thoroughly barred and shut, with many badly deteriorated from opened ceilings or monster damage; functionally they're more like walls or mountains, inaccessible to the hunter and covered in rubble and grass. The small portable stands that once competed with these shops have fared even worse, little more than rotting heaps of wood and textiles now. Most are so thoroughly coated in moss and mushrooms they're barely even recognizable, used only as safe havens for small-bodied creepy crawlies.

The Ruins' starting base camp is in this district and leads to a circular, open courtyard with a massive, waterlily filled fountain loved by frogs. This is the map's starting point and leads up and out to all the other parts of the city. Going north through the streets leads to a large stairway that goes up into the Cloud District, and thus also the Clocktower. To the west and through a small overgrown vineyard is the Guild District, which sits even with the Marketplace but is separated by a tall, ivy covered wall. The Waterfront is east and located below and outside the main city, far off but easy to survey from that height. Three roads lead down to it, each much narrower than the main thoroughfare of the market, but only the northernmost one remains usable. The next road over is blocked by a collapsed building and the third barely remains at all: that whole corner of the area has crumbled into the sea, leading only to a sharp and very long drop. Traveling down to the Waterfront is the most obvious way to reach the Sewer, but also the longest; keener eyes should look for open manholes scattered across the district.

The Cloud District
Directly north is the Cloud District, an elevated residential area the city's older and wealthier citizens once called home. The streets here aren't quite as wide and open, but the buildings certainly are: most of them are substantially bigger and easier to get into, with open windows, doorways and crumbled walls that give easy access for both animals and hunters. These abandoned homes are ideal places to get away from bad weather and large monsters and hold many intriguing items from the city's past. The second floors in most are blocked or collapsed, but a few are at least partially intact and ready to be explored. The rooftops are mostly all intact as well, giving an added layer of verticality to this region.

Plant life in the Cloud District is mostly of the creeping variety. Ivy and thorny vines grow in abundance here, scrambled far up the sides of buildings and posts and creating many natural ladders, grapplehook spots, and barriers. The streets are dustier and less lively, their brick roads more densely packed than the ones below. Grasses and other ground plants have a hard time growing in this district, save for in the few spots where bare soil has been exposed by old monsters damage and the eruption of giant tree roots.

The main route into the Cloud District is an enormous set of stairs leading up from the Marketplace. Smaller curved stairways serve as secondary connections between the two, as well as into the Guild District. The northern perimeter of the city wall is too tall and intact to be climb up but can be used as a place to jump down from for hunters who ran up from the Waterfront. The Cloud District is also home to the Clocktower, which stands in the southwest and is a separate area unto itself.

An additional base camp can be raised atop the perimeter wall overlooking this District, but can only be reached by climbing up from the Waterfront.

The Clocktower
Horizontally speaking this is by far the smallest "biome" in Gran Veya, but vertically it's downright monumental, towering above the tallest trees, rooftops, and even the perimeter wall. This colossal structure was once a famous landmark and symbol of the city, but miraculous as its survival was it still rests firmly in the hands of monsters, not humans. The clock faces have all been shattered, letting all manner of bird and wyvern into the upper chamber to roost, feed, and lay eggs. The ropes, platforms, and gigantic gears inside are mostly sheltered from the elements, but some sections have become dangerously unstable after being opened up to the wind and rain. Some of the machinery has rusted loose and fallen already, leaving clockwork incomplete and the floors riddled with gaping holes. Since all but the top floor is still enclosed (mostly) the Clocktower is the darkest part of the city beside the Sewer.

The Clocktower can only be accessed from the Cloud District... or can it?

The Guild District
To the west is an imposing wall covered in ivy: passing through its mangled, rusted gates leads into the Guild District, the most heavily fortified and badly damaged part of the city. This District once housed a great library, greenhouse, and cadet academy, but hardly anything remains of them; the city's destructor was more focused on the nearby barracks and armory and smashed everything to pieces. Highly valuable Guild documents and weapon components might still be buried here, but finding them won't be easy. Well preserved buildings are much scarcer here and there are giant piles of wreckage and rusted gear to sift through. The largest building still standing is the main Guild hall, a truly impressive structure even in decay. Only its front stairs, lobby, storeroom, and the base foundations of its long lost attachments have stayed, the rest obliterated by a monstrous attack that took all the west wall and corner with it. The gaping wreckage overlooks the ocean, pale and distant thousands of feet below.

Though totally exposed at the back the Guild Hall is still one of the city's largest and sturdiest buildings, a suitable place to stand fast against rampaging monsters. Its interior is only open on the side facing the sea cliff, making it accessible only to monsters that fly. Even then, those that can get in can't reach the storeroom, which is too small for wyverns and separated by a short hallway. Enough time and elbow grease might just turn it into a second base camp!

It's also been theorized by some architects that at least parts of the old library basement might still be intact deep down beneath the District's ruins. No search parties have yet been able to find a way in to make sure, but on the off chance that anything remains the Guild has offered a substantial award to any hunter who can bring back texts from the old Guild library.

The Guild District connects directly to the Market District, as well as to the Cloud District via a winding stone stairway. Like that District it's also distantly connected to the Waterfront, but since the perimeter wall's partially destroyed here hunters can't follow it in a complete circle around the map. On the bright side, the sloped edge of the ruined wall lets hunters climb back up if they decide to jump down.

The Sewer
Located directly beneath everything else, the Sewer is the most expansive part of Gran Veya's ruins, but also the wettest and least vertical. These days these huge, sprawling pipes move only ground and rain water, they're every bit as dark and dungy as they were originally. Hanging mosses, slippery molds, and a wide variety of water plants have taken up residence in this sheltered environment. Sparse sunlight shines from the grates and manholes above and a cool westerly breeze aerates the tunnels from openings in the Waterfront. The water that passes through here is mostly shallow and swift moving, making it traversable by running, sliding, or using the grappling hook- but close to half of it is filled with water so deep it must be swam through. Spots like that are murky and slow, covered on the surface with duckweed and other floating plants and full of fish. They're also a natural resting spot for any debris that's washed down from the surface; it's hard to say what's gathering muck down there.

There are multiple rusted ladders leading up into different parts of the Market and Cloud Districts, but be careful when going back and forth: not all the manholes leading down into the Sewer have corresponding ladders to go back up. The most obvious way out is through the large culverts in the east.

The Waterfront
A wide and sturdy concrete "beach" that lies far below the city wall. Throngs of fishermen and visiting merchants once crowded here, but the torches have all gone out and the piers are in disrepair. A lengthy series of wooden docks reach out into the neighboring bay- some in better shape than others, but all badly battered by the elements. Most of the objects associated with daily life here blew into the water years ago, leaving it fairly open and barren. The Sewer culverts and a stone building partially crushed by fallen debris from the Market are the only places of shelter. Most of this area is simply its bay, which is a huge and murky expanse of shallow salt water, deep enough to swim in but barely a pond compared to the ocean beyond. A line of buoys marks the limit of exploration and a large sharq net with holes only monsters can pass through.

The Waterfront is fairly isolated, directly connected only to the Sewer. Using the ladders there is probably the fastest way to leave the area, but there is one road leading up into the Market District, as well as a potential shortcut using the grapplehook to scale the city wall. This shortcut can be used either as an alternate path into the Marketplace or as a way to get on top of the wall itself, allowing travel by foot all the way around the city.

Native Monsters
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Before the Fall
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