The Metro

Moscow's Metro System (Russian: Московский метрополитен) alluded to as the Last Refuge, and known in-universe as The Metro, is the central location and namesake of the Metro Series.

The year was 2030 when the bombs fell, Moscow has been destroyed by a large scale missile exchange, involving many of the world's superpowers. Humanity has fled to Moscow's Metro system, designed both for transport and as a bomb shelter. After twenty years humanity each station has become a small nation state in itself with its own government. Alliances have been formed, wars have been waged. The locations of every station, tunnel, and surface outpost can be found on the map of the post-apocalyptic metro system.

An apocalyptic war on a grand scale has devastated the surface of the Earth, leaving deadly radiation and biological weapons that have changed fauna into dangerous mutants. The Moscow Metro, which was planned from the beginning to be a giant underground air-raid shelter, became the last refuge of humanity. The Metro system is made up of subway lines. Each line has its own amount of stations, in which live Moscow's survivors of the holocaust. Each station has its own leader, customs, and even political ideology. Every station, however, has one thing in common, survival. The tunnels are a source of constant dangers - radiation, mental threats, bandits and mutant predators take the lives of the many of those people who venture between stations to trade or travel.

The Metro system is a large and (to an extent) unexplored place, composed of a labyrinth of lines, tunnels, subway systems, and subway stations. The people who fled to the metro utilized the subway stations as permanent homes.

The Moscow Metro is divided into 2 main sections: subway stations and subway tunnels. There are over 100 stations, each clinging to its own society and government. Some stations band together to survive while others turn to anarchy or every man for himself. As time goes on, the stations become more distant from each other, resulting in the emergence of factions and conflict. However, while these stations can be a harsh and cruel place to live, the most dangerous parts of the metro are the transition zones.

While the exact number of empty or inactive stations is unknown, it is known that many of the original 188 stations on the 12 lines have fallen in the two decades since the Great War of 2013, due to post-war conditions. There are, however, many stations that are still "alive". Some station lines live in relative peace, at least compared to other outskirt stations. Much of this is due to the ideological alliances, and splits, that have occurred in the metro's past.

Transition zones make up the subway tunnels that connect the metro to the surface, giving all sorts of deadly mutants access to the metro. The tunnels also connect each station to each other, inevitably causing the tunnels to become main battlegrounds for conflicting parties. 

Outside of Moscow, confirmed locations with existing communities of survivors include: Warsaw, Kraków, as well as a number of cities, towns and villages across Poland; Kiev, the capital of Ukraine; Minsk, the capital of Belarus; the Italian capital of Rome; plus plenty of other areas in Russia, such as the renowned city of Petrograd. There are several survivor communities in Kazakhstan.