Verdansk, Kastovia and Urzikstan - relevant in Zombies?

[anonymous]

Hey folks,

 

I'd like to start with the location of the setting. It can hardly be overlooked that Warzone takes place in Verdansk, the major city of the mountainous state of Kastovia.

 

"This place was nice once. East and West rebuilt Verdansk after the Cold War." - Nikolai (Different person that the Nikolai)

 

Verdanski is...a rather complicated city. For some reason, it seems like a magnet pulling big dangers towards it. Something happened in the Cold War, we don't know what, but it led to the destruction of Verdansk, which is presumably the reason why the downtown of the city is solely skyscrapers, apartment blocks and office complexes. The only remnant of it's more ancient past is the stronghold southeast of the city's centre, now being used as a prison.

 

If that weren't enough, Verdansk was invaded by Al-Qatala in 2020, supplied by Viktor Zakhaev, and massacred Verdansk's population. Why you may ask? Well no one really understands why, they just wanted to go to Urzikstan and figured out it couldn't be achieved without launching a full-scale attack on Kastovia & Verdansk. Urzikstan is the next geographical absurdity in this.

 

 

So Urzikstan is located on a peninsula at the Black Sea, while Verdansk is located in the middle of the Caucasus. What is wrong, I'll explain. First of all, notice the geographical inconsistency.

What you look at is eastern Turkey, with the Caucasian states northeast of it. Here follows a comparision:

 

Notice how the high Caucasus of Georgia overlaps the mountain range above Kastovia. The open water we see in the corner bottom left is the Gulf of Iskenderun, Turkey. The dublicated lake is Lake Van, also located in Turkey. The Caspian Sea has been perished. Now, logically, this has been done because Call of Duty doesn't want to directly relate the events of Warzone and Modern Warfare to a specific country. In my headcanon this enormous landmass in the east was the Caspian Sea but following the same fate as the Aral Sea, once the forth largest lake in the world now largely dried up due to Soviet irrigation projects. Perhaps in this universe, this insanely sad fate also happened to the Caspian Sea, after the Soviets drained the Volga river (the Sea's main water inflow).

 

 

Still though, one massive geographical oddity remains: the fact that Urzikstan, an Arab nation, is located at the Black Sea (while the Arab culture starts beneath the Turks), and Verdansk, a city that is most definately located at open waters, is located in the middle of the mountains. Additionally to this, most buildings in Warzone are based on real life buildings in Eastern Ukraine and the Donbass. So is this map an error of the developers? Should Verdansk and Urzikstan actually have been swapped?

 

Continuing the subject of this thread, I'd like to discuss the involvement of Zakhaev. Not only was he a native Verdansker, he was also the reason why Al-Qatala could invade Kastovia. He definately has a tie to the city of Warzone. Now what is interesting, is that in documents found in Warzone, it is stated that his mentor is the one and only Perseus, of course well known in the Black Ops/Cold War universe. This would mean that Verdansk, Kastovia and Urzikstan also exist in the Cold War universe. And thereby, automatically, in the Dark Aether Zombieverse. How do you think about that? Will Verdansk have a role in the Zombies story? Is it, perhaps, the reason why the city was destroyed in the Cold War?