2211 was the year that the second moon of the gas giant, Cavelier, was colonised in a joint Franco-American venture. Their colony ship had travelled for many years to arrive in the system. The young people who started the journey from Sol were elderly by they time they'd reached orbit of Cavelier. Though when they made landfall, their descendants named it Louisiana.
The years were harsh, prior to them building the connector station between they solar system and Sol. Native mollusc beings harassed their efforts and the storm prone environment battered they settlements.


Soon though, Louisiana became an old friend of prosperity once the connector station was finished. With economic backing from the powers in the Sol-system, the colonists pushed the natives into reservations off the main continent and weather stations were built to alter the weather in their favour. For a good century, the colony boomed and the population soared in the various metropolises that peeled across the colony. For a colony on the edge of known space, they were competing with the powerhouse core worlds for many decades. There was however, forces conspiring against the colony, both from within and without.


Human space beyond the connector station was unravelling at the seams. Conflicts on Earth and IN the Sol system were starting to involve other systems. Colonies on the edge of known space were starting to collapse on themselves and economies were taking nose dives.
The once steady convoys and routes that flowed through the connector station were drying up.
On Louisiana, the colonial republic was regarded more as a joke with every bill passed and with every election counted. Voter dissatisfaction and apathy was driving people away from democracy. While also driving loyal believers of democracy to radicalise in defence of their republic.

Political, economic and celebrity dynasties were becoming more and more like aristocrats, who pushed and prodded the government in their favour. While pressure groups became political parties vying for the growing radical vote.
Then Louisiana became divided on views on a sign issue. Accident? Attack? or Sabotage?


The connector station was destroyed. In a midst of a flurry of communications packages and unexpected incoming shipping. The media of Louisiana was promoting various angles on the incident. Most called it an accident, a near derelict station with a skeleton crew being replaced with mechanoids, it was bound to happen. After analysing the communications however, some argued that a detonation took place. Prior to an invasion by nearby systems to seize Louisiana's wealth and people.
Then there are the stories of sabotage, committed by powers on Louisiana to enable a coup d'état or open the colony to civil war.

Regardless, the Louisiana was cut off from the rest of human space. With no way of reaching out to the rest of the colonies and too embroiled with their own problems to send help that would take decades to reach them. Investigations were launched by the colonial republic, though ultimately they hadn't be able to find any tangible evidence before other matters presented themselves.


Panic quickly manifested into anarchy, riots that lasted for days and weeks, police forces across the colony either collapsing or dissolving under the pressure. Problems such as famine and diseases long forgotten, now sprung up and ejected people out of the cities and towns of Louisiana. In the mountain passes and highlands of the continental interior, groups once passively critical became actively hostile. Either out of necessity or opportunity, they all strived against the republic.

As the weeks went on and the government started to buckle under the continued pressure and increasing lack of resources. The dynasties with their wealth and power began openly challenging the republic, fortifying what they owned and seizing what they needed. Soon conflict erupted for resources and fleeing civilians and the republic were caught in the middle.


It was only a few months before the republic collapsed, torn apart and then all but forgotten. Then as two decades went on, settlements sprung up from amongst the wilderness that consumed the highways and cities. The weather stations that once kept the storms at bay have fallen one by one, as now great storms batter the continent and remove evidence of human dominance with every storm season.

The Dynasties set themselves up as the aristocracy they imitated, dividing their land into Baronies and enforcing order and prosperity through feudal obligation and authority. The Baronies built themselves grand keeps and compounds to protect their assets and their people. While also keeping the wilderness and it's dangers out.
Then you have the Survivor Clans, made up from the desperate and the cunning that escaped the cities. They survive the harsh Louisiana years by adapting to the world around them, building strong holdouts in land suitable for their needs and to capitalise on their skills.

Regardless of their forms or locations, the factions that have formed are dependent only on themselves and have goals and ambitions that could span the whole of the colony.

Faction Name: The Montanan Union

Faction Flag/symbol:


Faction Type: Survivor Clan

History: Prior to the destruction of the Connector Station, the area around Lake Montana was a small park area, where citizens from throughout Louisiana would come out to spend time in a small, selectively cultivated area of nature. After the collapse, the ensuing chaos forced many people to flee into the wilderness. Among them were survivalists, paranoid civilians who lived their previous lives in fear of such a cataclysmic event. They bought with them their limited knowledge of the native crops and farming, and made up the basis of the Montanan Union.

Most of these survivalists came from nearby Baton-Rouge, fleeing to Lake Montana after recognizing its importance as a cultivated fishing spot, and seeing the potential for small farms in the area. Upon reaching the lake, they found confused families and groups of friends, who felt themselves stranded at the lake by the chaos of the Connector's destruction. Seeing no other option, they allowed the survivalists to live with them in their tents and RVs while they worked on establishing their own shelter, in exchange for assistance in surviving.

The next few months were madness, as food began to run scarce and crops were only just beginning to bloom. When things seemed bleak, a man by the name of Christophe Beauchamp rose to prominence by organizing a meeting of all those living near Lake Montana, where after a day of debate, Christophe was able to convince the isolated groups to begin pooling resources and expertise, to come together into the Montanan Union.

Once together in the Montanan Union, the residents of the Lake were able to began centralizing their districts, finding the ideal places to construct farms and dwellings, salvaging their old technology for scrap metal and wires.

Now, with the Union in a state of physical and food security, Christophe turns his eyes toward the ruined city of Baton-Rouge, and the salvage that may be found within.

Goal: Generally, they just want to live.

Territory:

VIPs: Christophe Beauchampe- The de facto leader of the Montanan Union, he holds the majority of influence due to both charisma and being the founder of the Union. He is ambitious and driven, seeking to expand the Union's technological power through salvage and reverse-engineering.

Population: ~120
Society: The day typically involves 6 hours of work, either gathering supplies from the wilderness, working the fields or constructing new buildings. There are few things to do, leading to downtime commonly being spent socializing with other members of the community. It is common for young children to go swimming in the lake, or spend some time exploring the outskirts of the Union's territory.

Main Settlement: Newway- Almost all of the population of the MU lives within Newway, a tiny town with re-purposed RVs turned into dwellings for new families and those caring for the young, as well as the elderly. Around this main family area are huts constructed from wood and other materials from the surrounding forest, where the generation of workers live and spend time together. On the outskirts of Newway are the farms and forests of the MU.

Food Production: A combination of farming, hunting and fishing.

Electricity: Currently no electricity is produced. Lighting at night is provided by fires.

Essential Production: Having harnessed basic levels of flax production, the MU is able to produce clothing and other linen items. They are also able to construct basic tools with salvaged metals.

Specialist Production: Nothing

Defences: The MU relies on being left alone, although the citizens are fairly good at fending off the local wildlife.

Military numbers: 0 standing military, but citizens are willing to quickly organise into a militia if need be.

Military assets: Salvaged spears, swords and knives.

Anyone want to do some shared history? I have an idea for a noble house that was almost wiped out in a coup during the end of the republic and ended up fleeing into the hills. If anyone wants to play a rival house or organization we could have some fun shenanigans.

@The Great Nahman Jayden Not bad at all, are you sure you want such a low population or do you have a cunning plan up your sleeves?

@Talis I'm going to pick my faction type, based on the ratio of factions that others pick. By all means though, if you can't anyone after a while, I'll team up with yah history!

I'm really digging the concept. Brainstorming a brief application.

My faction concept thus far. @LloydTurquoise let me know if this faction fits in with the tech level and scale of gameplay you have in mind or not.

Faction Name: Chekov’s Factory
Faction Flag/symbol:
Faction Type: Barony

History:

Andrei Chekov was an immigrant to Lousiana fifty years ago, an unusual Slavic immigrant to a Franco-American colony world, but welcome nonetheless for his singular genius in robotics and technology, particularly the Task-Intelligence matrix that made his robots uniquely adaptable and efficient within their specialized field. Within five years, his robots were being made in factories across the colony and was popularly considered one of the techno-economic pillars of Lousiana against the coreworlds. Respect and awe equated to incredible freedom of R&D and funding for his increasingly secretive work. Though Chekov gradually slipped out of the public stage and blackboxed his technology beyond reverse-engineering, everyone assumed his stipulations of secrecy were merely to protect his rightful intellectual property and paid him little mind as the robots kept coming.

What no one suspected of the inventor was his hidden desire to break the one rule of robotics: the creation of sentient AI. Silently fuming against the restriction on artificial life and capabilities, Chekov came to Lousiana to finalize his dreams of creating life by his design away from the prying eyes of the Coreworld corporations and governments.

The Collapse was no setback to Chekov, who responded to the increasing degredation of the Republic by consolidating the bulk of his technology and work into a single factory complex in Bayonne City to at last pursue his work unfettered. As the dynasties arose and baronies were constructed, Chekov became a fortified city-state unto himself apart from any faction or dynasty, buying his neutrality by continuing to sell industrial products and renting his robots as mercenary troops to any barony that would pay.

Presently Chekov continues to pursue sentient AI, a goal perhaps still years in the future despite his continued refinement of Task-Intelligence systems. But practical problems in maintaining his Factory as well as problems besetting Lousiana once more force him to start interacting with the outside world for what he needs to continue his secret research.

Goal: Chekov seeks to create a fully sentient AI. In more immediate goals that translates into survival, recovering parts to repair his hydroelectric power plant, and recovering pre-Collapse research data to accelerate his efforts, in that order of priorities.

Territory: A factory complex on the riverside of Bayonne City, built up into a fortified complex.

VIPs:

Chekov, the enigmatic inventor and genius. Authoritarian ruler of the Factory and it’s army of machines loyal only to him. A pale and withered old man even with three rounds of longevity treatments and soon to be confined to a wheelchair or exoskeleton, his mind is no less sharp than ever as his rate of invention and development has only increased since the Collapse. Never seen outside his workshop and command center in the depths of the Factory, and never gives personal audience to anyone besides his machines.

Clockwork: Industrial Task-Intelligence, controls and directs most of the industrial systems of the Factory. It’s body is the Factory itself, or rather the parts with robotic limbs and working automation. For everything else it has to boss around humans. A gruff and not terribly nice robot even by their standards, but Chekov doesn’t care so long as it maintains quotas.

Cowboy: A six-foot service robot wearing a duraflex poncho and a wide-brimmed solar cell hat over a body previously used as a waiter, Cowboy is a reprogrammed social unit that acts as leader for trading and scavenging expeditions, as well as a mobile long-range radio set that can link to Chekov directly when he needs to directly talk to other humans. For noncompliance or customers refusing to pay, it has a pair of heavy six-shooters. The cowboy aesthetic and personality matrix was Chekov’s attempt to play to the American culture of the colony for emotional connection. Most people wish he hadn't bothered downloading a sterotypical cowboy chatbot persona into a robot.

Behemoth: A 15-foot mobile humanoid heavy mech section leader, anthropomorphizing one of Chekov’s line of development into human introspection by possessing twin “irrational” and “logical” TI-cores linked together. While not fully sentient, it’s capacity for adaptive logic and introspection (debate between the two cores cores) can fool a undiscerning human while enabling reactive complex multitasking. Unlike most robots, it possesses a full onboard hydrogen fuel cell system that can power itself for weeks, alongside heavy armor and wrist and shoulder hardpoints for weapons to protect itself and function as one of Chekov’s primary combat leader units. Due to expense of creation and maintenance, it remains a one-off design and reserved for putting down serious threats to the Factory.

Population: 1,049 humans. 6,500+ robots

Society:
Life in the Factory is austere and regimented, with Chekov’s followers treated just above the machines they tend to and operate. Chekov places little regard towards comfort or aesthetics, and it is reflected in the Factory’s utilitarian layout and infrastructure, seeing to the needs of it’s people without much regard for their comfort outside of communal recreational facilities. Everyone lives by the shift clock, and all are expected to contribute to the Factory or be expelled from it’s walls.

Still, Chekov does recognize that his “human resources” operate best when granted more than survival, and maintains a uniform rule of law within the Factory for reliable justice while still respecting freedom of speech and expression (insofar as it does not impede the operations of the Factory), and maintaining several Medialink nodes that contain recreational data surviving the Collapse. Hard toil during the day is rewarded with time-allocations to watch movies, play video games, or review historical archives without the censorship or authoritarianism other Baronys often apply to such media, again insofar as it does not detract from operation of the Factory.

Main Settlement: The Factory. A former advanced robotics complex, now turned into a fortified city-state unto itself.

Food Production:
Besides food imports from other Baronys, factory farming is the predominant food supply in Chekov’s territory. Hydroponics, mycoprotein vats, factory ranching, and such are one of the Factory’s external annexes in a consolidated urban agri-plant. The average diet consists of filtered water and condensed nutrient ration bars, which leads to foodstuffs being a predominant import of Chekov's human followers.

Electricity: The Factory is built upon a hydroelectric dam, with a backup solar and wind farm that has been expanded since the Collapse. All three supply Chekov considerable sums of electricity, but recent malfunctions and unreliability from the hydroelectric station has prompted rationing primarily turned to manufacturing, hydroponics, and military purposes over civilian use. Should the power be unplugged for any reason for long, is is likely the Factory will shut down for good.

Essential Production: Nutri-bars, Machine tools, ballistic ammunition, spare parts.

Specialist Production: Robots, bots, mechs, high-density power packs, solar cells.

Defences:
The Factory is surrounded by a 15-foot concrete wall studded with watchtowers, barbed wire, and autoturrets at the gates. The standard shift rotations are handled by flying camera bots and a few squads of robots marching the walls. In alert scenarios, reserve bot companies and heavy mechs operating on tethered power can be mobilized to respond to situations, although due to power expenditure this full mobilization state cannot be maintained for long without shutting down other parts of the Factory.

Military numbers: 324 human militia/scavengers/traders. 2,306 combat bots.

Military assets:

Chekov’s primary military edge is combat robotics, retaining a number of automated infantry and heavy mech designs in active production to terminate threats to his domain, alongside reserves of refitted civilian bots and "dumb" support drones. While nowhere near as smart or adaptable as experienced human survivors or fighters, Chekov’s Task-Intelligence matrix combined with the fearlessness, durability, and capacity for heavier weapons make his robots comparable opposition regardless. The primary weakness of most of Chekov’s robots is power, as even his best batteries don’t last more than a day, and combat-level operations drain them within hours. This often leads to his bots marching with solar-cell hats and improvised hydrogen fuel cell backpacks to supplement their batteries, or operating off tethered power supplies in friendly territory or in conjunction with heavy mechs with charging ports for their smaller comrades. But the most common solution is to simply kill before running out of power.

To capitalize on combat robot’s durability and limit power expenditure, bot-infantry are often deployed by APC’s refitted for bot’s and able to serve as mobile recharging stations, or in high-level operations are airdropped by cargo VTOLs that serve as deployment racks and mobile command nodes. Chekov has limited stocks of either vehicle type and personnel to operate them, so long-range deployments are reserved solely for when Chekov needs to put a enemy down hard.

In terms of weaponry, Chekov has domestic capacity for manufacturing ballistics-based weaponry, typically preferring to build to human proportions and calibers while vastly upscaling ammunition storage beyond human load-lifting ability, with the intent of compensating for poor aim with deep magazines and fewer reloads (easier to build self-reloading warbot guns than program a gun-reloading warbot). Still, ammunition expenditure is a problem, so Chekov isn't above buying weapons from other baronys.

The relative handful of human fighters Chekov has are primarily used as face-men with other human colonies, handling actions his robots can’t such as diplomacy and trade, as well as providing battlefield direction to simpler machines as appointed bot-marshals.

@LloydTurquoise I have a few ideas on how to not get slaughtered

@Skylar I like it! Keep doing that!

@The Great Nahman Jayden In that case, stick it in characters, 'cus your application is accepted.

I will stick up my application soon. Hopefully, I will get accepted.

I might join, Thinking a Technophiliac Survivor clan with a mix of mechanoids and "Meat Interfaces" While the main goal is survival and protecting the Precious Server farms and spreading Holy Wi-fi wherever they can, A faction within them Really Really thinks humanity shouldnt be colonizing inhabited planets and thinks all the Meat-Interfaces should pack up and leave. Unfortunately as leaving is no longer possible This sub-faction now wants the meat-interfaces (humans) to die. So that the native lifeforms may be studied without interference so they may be taught the glories of the Internet.

@LloydTurquoise I would like to tell you that I am interested in this RP, if you'll have me. I would be playing a Barony heavily based around Mining and other Resources, such as Oil, mainly protected by its Hard-To-Access location, resourceful defenders and heavily fortified Citadel-City, as well as being the primary raw material provider for many groups. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, and all that.

Those sound awesome. I almost have my group done, just debating a bit of their back story and whether to make it a barony or survivor clan.

@Lucidnonsense@tal0n@Talis I look forward to all of your applications!