Name: Cockburne’s Army
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Territory: Cockburne’s Army does not hold very much true territory. Thousands of mutants will rove under Colonel Cockburne’s orders to scout out new lands for resources, science, and more mutants to join their cause or people to dip into FEV. There is only one territory they truly hold for themselves, and that is Columbus. Known now as the Titan City, traders speak of a peculiar land. It is overgrown with strange flora and fauna, filled with raiders, and guarded by green men; they protect only a half dozen primary entrances to the city where people may trade. The rest of the city is hunted for food to support what provides the main attraction for humans to the land; the Forges. Beneath the ground and within the basements, bunkers, public transport and all other such constructs labour thousands more mutants and even some people. Cataloguing items of scavenge, casting steel and then striking it into shape, working in labs and workshops, the Forge is a place where all of Cockburne’s army eventually returns to for it outputs crude but effective goods for the army to help them on their ultimate campaign.
History:Before the great war began there was a man, Jordan B. Cockburne. A good boy that was so eager to serve his country he lied about his age to join the Airborne and rose through its ranks until injury forced him to return home. There he founded a family with a beautiful wife, five children, and a dog. Going on to work in NORAD he was the model American citizen, an act that granted him a position in security of Vault 10.
The bombs fell, and with his family he was sent to hide from nuclear devastation. His vault was modelled much after his past life with artificial day and night cycles simulating the sun in a reconstruction of a suburban American neighbourhood. It was a luxurious lifestyle, but it was one that demanded much maintenance. A mere decade after the nuclear war parties of the Vault’s security were sent out to scavenge for resources to ensure that the way of life everyone within the Vault so cherished could be maintained.
With ease they dispatched the ragtag raiders and others that got in the way of the scavengers, until of course they couldn’t. More enterprising raiders followed them to their vault, laying a trap for them from outside. Jordan survived their onslaught, retreating to the vault, however with keycards and high explosives they were able to eventually break their way in. A fearsome battle was had over the Vault, the raiders pushing ever deeper inwards over several days. The last holdout was in the Medical facilities of the Vault, and the Vault’s secondary experiment was prematurely activated. Riddled with burns and bruises and bullet holes Jordan was the last man capable of standing of all his people. To fight the good fight just a little longer he ran into the autodoc, which rather than curing his wounds closed a hermetic seal and flooded with FEV.
The doors of the machine opened at the same time as the snickering bandits entered the place looking to slaughter all the wounded of the Vault. This wish did not come to fruition as a green monster appeared, one that ignored their pleas for mercy.
In but an hour the raider force was reduced to red smears on floors and walls. Jordan returned, looking to his people. Much like himself they were all beyond the salvation of traditional medicine. But perhaps the autodoc would have its chemical mercy on them just as it did on him. One by one he forced them within, a colleague, a friend, or a loved one emerging in a new form.
Grabbing all the weapons, tech and supplies that they could from the vault the survivors of it emerged into the Wasteland. For a long time they were a force of misanthropy, seeking vengeance on the entire outer world for what it had done to them. Dozens of communities and proto-tribes were wiped out before at last Cockburne’s people ceased their slaughter. The FEV that had corrupted them was fraying at their memories, and as they forgot what had even enraged them so they used their pip-boys to leave holotape messages for themselves to remember who they were, and what they valued most. For Jordan Cockburne, this was family. His people wandered the wasteland doing their best to survive. But Jordan knew that family had to live, not just survive. They returned to the Vault, taking with them many captured people to put in those same auto-docs to become supermutants. But it wasn’t enough to simply go forth and multiply.
Jordan took his people, and decided that he had to learn more about what their new life’s purpose was. They travelled far, eventually hearing of people akin to themselves in California. However, by the time they reached it the Master’s Army was long since defeated. This was no matter however, for there were many of its children in the Wasteland that Jordan could adopt as his own.
As it swelled in numbers, Cockburne’s army began to take a form more recognizable to its current form. They began to realize the flaws of their nature as a truly existential threat. They had heard of other supermutants who had headed to Texas and the Midwest. First Cockburne investigated the Gammorin Army which was long defeated by the time he arrived. There they slaughtered many of the Midwestern Brotherhood as they liberated their kinsmen in the search for whatever they could find of Latham’s research and resources. Eventually they decided it was a lost cause to remain in the Midwest, and thus they headed to Texas following the footsteps of the Attis Army. Once more they crushed many in their path, this time fighting against the Texan Brotherhood as they sought to find what happened to Attis and his quest. Once more realizing that their cousins had failed, the mutants of Cockburne’s army rallied what other mutants they could from Texas and headed back North. At this point the army was both large enough to decentralize, but had enough trusted men in it to ensure it did not splinter by doing so. As a token force stayed in Nevada to eventually incorporate some of Utobitha and Jacobstown before heading East to rejoin their comrades, Cockburne hoped he could make a home in Chicago. He had heard that within were the Enclave, remnants of the US government. He was a member of the army after all, and if he explained things to them they would understand of course, and welcome a fellow American with open arms.
He was sorely mistaken. As Cockburne looked upon the forest of sticks bearing heads taken off of the people he thought would be his comrades, he once more realized that it was a lost cause staying in Chicago and thus headed east yet again.
At last the army had made its way into Columbus, where Cockburne decided that it was time to settle down. The city was full of mutant animals and plants that had long since killed off any human inhabitants, but it was a place where supermutants could thrive. They made themselves homes in the underground where they could do any domestic work they needed whilst they could simply head to the surface to collect water and kill wildlife to sate themselves. For a few years this hiding continued as it so comfortably echoed to the life in pre war America the man so dearly missed. But he soon realized he had lost vision when he found a holotape buried beneath some ammunition in one of his pouches.
He had to fix his people.
The people of Cockburne’s army spread out from their subterranean forges making contact with whatever communities were friendly to establish trade, whilst annihilating any that were not. He found many other supermutant warbands, all of whom were beaten into submission to join the Army.
In the name of the greater good, it was time for the family to experience a little tough love. The society that had emerged in Columbus was forced to drop the chaotic nature that many of its constituents had for long known as their only way. Cockburne’s army truly began to run like one as strict hierarchy was introduced, and any mutant that stepped out of it suffered harsh consequences. All worked for the common good, for Jordan had too great of a vision to let any one individual get in the way of it.
Pressing Issues: Cockburne’s army faces a great many inevitable difficulties by its very nature. Made up almost entirely of supermutants of varying origins, there is a great deal of tribalism within it. Texas, the Midwest, Mariposa, Cascadia, Vault 87, the Institute, and Appalachia all had their own unique variants of FEV that in turn made mutants different to one another often having non negligible animosity to each other for this very fact. Indeed, in some cases such as with Mariposan supermutants there is even intra-subspecies rivalry between first and second generation mutants as well as Nightkin. But supermutants do share several problems that Cockburne has made it his mission to solve. The Colonel as he describes his goal himself wants to cure the supermutant condition in one of two ways. Either creating a cure for it allowing them to return to humanity, or to fix their sterility, stupidity, and other congenital defects. This is of course a very difficult task to accomplish. Many scientists are under the employ of Cockburne’s army. But this is never enough, no matter how many labs and universities are plundered. Often they have to purchase the services of scientists from without, or alternatively kidnap such.
Until such a day that these works of science are accomplished however, the army has many more urgent things to deal with. First and foremost the long term concerns of Cockburne lead him to the problem of the army’s reproduction. Supermutants cannot have children, and as such to swell the ranks the army is often forced to kidnap entire villages or tribes to dip into FEV. For public relations if anything the army does however prefer to impress existing mutant warbands it comes across into its ranks to expand, such methods oft garnering them the favour of communities that had to deal with such.
The intelligence and other deficiencies of supermutants are also what lead to the army never truly being able to become a state of sorts. It is a hyper regimented society where every single mutants play a piece in a complex machine. Cockburne long realized he cannot afford to have anybody but his most trusted men doing any sort of ‘multi-tasking’. A mutant will struggle to perform many complex tasks and as such the army is forced to make very specific roles for everyone. A mutant in the forges will spend decades working on the same exact type of screw without falter but he will never be able to be reassigned to another task. This ensures efficiency unmarred by the faults of the mutated mind but it makes replacement of those that die for one reason or the other very difficult.
Public relations are also very difficult to the Army. Few people in the wasteland have a positive predisposition to supermutants. This is not helped by the fact that the army has often been forced to do things Cockburne is well aware are immoral for its survival.
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