Concept art — work in progress, not final
Tjernov was a fog-bound archipelago in the cold northern sea — a place that only ever appeared on classified maps. In the Soviet era it was sealed off as a closed zone: a garrison watched the sea, a bunker kept a secret, and a grey worker's city rose on the riverbank to feed the gas works that ran it all.
Then the ground moved. Decades of extraction at Razlom had woken the fault beneath the islands. One great quake — the survivors just call it the Razlom — dropped the low coast beneath the waves, and the sea poured into everything that had sunk. The land broke apart into islands; the old heart of the zone drowned and never came back. The infection arrived later, over a land that was already a ruin.
The sea took it back.
From the southern spawn coast up to the endgame north — the further you go, the closer you get to what the zone was built to hide.
the fishing coast
low · spawn · fishing villages
The oldest, highest ground in Tjernov — too unimportant to guard, which is why people survived. Where every survivor washes up.
Evacuation notice, Zuidwal slip: “One bag. Do not return for property.” The boats came twice. After that, the hour came and went.
the Black City
mid · city · PvP hub
The grey worker's city. The river Tjerna splits it — two bridges, two chokepoints. The Hoogbouw owns the sightlines over the central Ploshchad, where the loot draws everyone in. Weapons and medicine sit on opposite sides on purpose.
Party slogan across the Hoogbouw: “THE ZONE PROVIDES. THE ZONE REMEMBERS.” Scratched below: the zone forgot us first.
the Strip
mid · airfield · vehicles
A small military dispersal airstrip set hard against the water. Half its cracked tarmac runs straight into the sea now — the zone's vehicle and rotor hub.
Final flight-log line: “All airframes grounded, water on the threshold. Holding for orders.” The orders never came.
the Beacon
mid · comms · overwatch
A relay station on a coastal ridge — commanding sightlines, hard to take. Its transmitter never went dark.
Looping transmission: “...семь, девять, два... Tjernov is listening... seven, nine, two...” No one knows who it was meant for.
the Drowned City — “dead water”
mid/high · boat · underwater
The old heart of the zone and its lowest ground. It dropped beneath the waterline in a single morning and never surfaced. Reached only by boat — and by holding your breath. The deep rooms still hold the best of what's left.
A fisherman's joke about a still, fishless channel. After the Razlom, no one laughed.
the Rupture
mid/high · industry · gas
The gas and pumping complex that kept Tjernov running — and the place where it all went wrong. Heavy industrial loot over ground that still isn't finished settling.
Last seismic-log entry: “Event 0500h, magnitude exceeds scale. Recommend full halt and evac—” The sentence is not finished.
Northern Garrison
endgame · island fortress
The island fort guarding the seaward approach. One obvious way in — the jetty — and that is the trap. The parade ground lies open under the watchtowers; the Arsenal sits deepest of all, past the killing floor.
Standing orders, gatehouse: “The parade ground is a free-fire zone after dark. There is no second warning.”
Object Winter
endgame · bunker
The northernmost, coldest point: a sealed underground facility known only by a codename. The blast doors are still shut. What waits behind the inner doors is not written down anywhere.
Recovered manifest: “...transfer of ███████ to deep storage complete. Site reclassified ZIMA...” Everything that mattered is blacked out.
Tjernov is planned at roughly 10 × 10 km (~100 km²) — a dense, self-contained archipelago built for island-hopping, naval travel and close, high-stakes fights.
Tjernov is an original, custom-built world for Sector 31. Concept art shown here is work-in-progress.