Confederated Northern City-States
Overview
The northern hemisphere of Terra Nova was settled in the early days of colonization. Its relatively temperate climate, plentiful rivers and large forests made it attractive for corporate and private colonists. The Port Aurora spaceport was built as the second major entry point to Terra Nova and eventually grew into Valeria-Port Aurora, the most populous city-state on the planet.
After the chaos of Reconstruction, the North eventually settled into the Confederated Northern City-States (CNCS). This alliance includes three different member leagues: the Northern Lights Confederacy (NLC), United Mercantile Federation (UMF) and the Western Frontier Protectorate (WFP). Though they share many cultural traits, the Northern leagues each have their own way of doing things and have clashed in the past. The CNCS also contains numerous Badlands communities.
Over its 250 cycles of life, the CNCS has also established several protectorates in the deserts of the Badlands. Timmins in the Western Desert, Red Sands on the Cajun Plains and Wounded Knee on the edge of the Barrington Basin each send a single representative to the Inner Council in Valeria. The protectorates are quite diverse: Timmins is an industrial town with a reputation for low-quality knock-offs, Red Sands produces glassware, and Wounded Knee is a smuggling den controlled by ruthless cartels. In TN 1929 a protectorate was also established over Massada, the historical center of Revisionist faith, but this is officially only an accord for defense purposes — Massada has no representation in Valeria and is not considered part of the CNCS.
All the member states send representatives to an Inner Council in Valeria, where the Norlight Confederacy maintains the most seats, followed most closely by the Mercantile Federation. Councilors are usually named by the national governments (sometimes with public consultation) and are seen as relatively distant by the public. The only CNCS officials to achieve recognition across the hemisphere are Chief Justice Winston Stark, who chairs both the Inner Council and the Supreme Court, and Grand Marshal Victoria Edden-Smythe, who commands the military.
Culture
Northern Life
Terra Nova’s northern hemisphere is a land of fertile plains and rich temperate basins, cut by tall mountain ranges. While there is a great deal to separate Northerners from one another, from national cultures to geographic location, outsiders often look upon them a as unified whole. Indeed, they all share a great deal.
Most Northerners speak Human Anglic, a derivative of Anglo-Saxon languages and the standard language of business in the northern hemisphere. In the Norlight Confederacy, religious ceremonies are performed in Indo-Arabic, since it was the language spoken by Mamoud Khodaverdi, the Gentle Prophet. In addition to speaking Anglic, residents of the Western Frontier Protectorate have also adopted Equatorial Hispanic, an Ice Age tongue which resembles a collage of ancient Spanish, English and Portuguese.
The North has its rough edges as well. Almost the entire Northern border with the Badlands is made up of a series of fertile plains and although political treaties fix these borders on the map, actual markings on the ground are very tenuous and the enforcement less than adequate. Many ranchers, traders and farmers make their living right on this frontier, leading a rugged rural life away from the conveniences of the cities.
Since the War of the Alliance, the Northern frontier has become very rough. The mammoth amounts of military hardware left scattered around the Badlands has increasingly found itself in the hands of rovers, smugglers, bandits and other unsavory individuals. The Northern Guard and league police forces are hard pressed to strictly control the huge land border, so isolated communities are often subject to raids or harassment. While individual rover gangs pose a threat in the area they target, a more general problem is growing from a power struggle among the smugglers of Wounded Knee. The cartels control huge networks and the Forzi and Kolson families are locked in a bloody conflict for lucrative Northern routes.
The scattered communities that are established in homesteads in the savannahs just outside of the leagues can also suffer from the problem of unwanted Northern attention. The Peters Clan from Fort James, for example, has been locked in a long term conflict with the independent community of Karlton Ranch. These Badlanders have few people they can turn to if their Northern neighbors decide to impose their will.
Military
The Northern Guard
Each of the three Northern leagues has its own standing army, but they also cooperate to form the Northern Guard. During peacetime, the Guard is a separate entity from the national armies and is deployed to defend borders with the Badlands and in the equatorial deserts themselves. In times of war, all three national armies are integrated into the Guard under a unified command structure.
Although there are differences in philosophy and training among the different armed forces, this integration necessitates a certain harmonization. Historically, the peacetime Guard has been relatively weak and the integration of the national armies has meant a virtual annexation of the United Mercantile Federation Army and Western Frontier Protectorate Army to the more numerous Norlight Armed Forces. Ever since the War of the Alliance, however, the Guard has become more and more independent. It now has its own traditions and recruits many people directly into it.
The Guard is commanded by a Mercantile woman, Grand Marshal Victoria Edden-Smythe, and few people feel she is a Norlight pawn in any fashion. Edden-Smythe is a hero of the War of the Alliance and has a strong reputation across the hemisphere and the globe. Although not a Norlight, she is known to be a supporter of Reverend Hutchison and his fundamentalist agenda.
The Guard also serves the CNCS as a central structure for any and all hemispheric paramilitary activities. The Northern Guard Space Service has jurisdiction over much of the North’s orbital and systemwide assets and the Northern Guard Intelligence Service (NGIS) serves as a coordinated intelligence and special operations bureau for the hemisphere as a whole. Of course, each league maintains at least one intelligence agency of its own and rivalries continue, but the NGIS often leads the pack.
The Guard has many elite units, but arguably the most famous is the 7th Gear Regiment, known as the Cat’s Paws. The Paws are a special forces unit that uses cutting-edge Gears for surgical strikes and commando operations. The Paws were responsible for some of the most vital missions during the War of the Alliance and continue to fight in skirmishes with the South. The Paws are currently stationed in Zagazig in the NLC and are commanded by Colonel Stacey Diggs. Diggs is a respected soldier but has a knack for making political enemies in all the wrong places.
Religion
The strongest social movement in the North is Sorrento Revisionism. The national faith of the Norlight Confederacy, it also has a great many adherents in the UMF and WFP. The church was founded by Nathani Reiss, lifelong companion to Mamoud Khodaverdi, after the Gentle Prophet’s death. While Mamoud’s original faith remains strong in the desert holy city of Massada (and is known as Massadan Revisionism), the Sorrento church holds sway across the North.
Revisionists believe that the world is the reflection of a Gentle Spirit that either created or is reality as a whole. The manifestation of this Spirit’s will in the physical plane and in the hearts and minds of humans is called the Gentle Word. Mamoud and his Followers have guided those who would listen to act according to this Word. Peace, harmony and love support the Word, while discord, violence and death undermine it. Unlike Massadan Revisionist who are total pacifists, however, members of the Sorrento Church recognize the righteous use of force. If force is used to put an end to violence or oppression, then it is righteous and an act of peregrination (the Revisionist term for bettering the world). At times this has led the Sorrento Church and its followers to excess, including at least one religiously motivated massacre in the early days of the NLC.
In the last thirty cycles, Second Follower Thor Hutchison, the leader of the Sorrento Church, has led his faith through a fundamentalist revival that has placed emphasis on traditional Revisionist values and the importance of the church in the NLC and CNCS as a whole. Hutchison helped guide Northerners through the war with inspiration speeches and has led many to believe that the church should have a greater role in the running of political affairs. Unfortunately, this has meant growing intolerance towards non-Revisionists. These problems are the gravest in the Norlight Confederacy, but Revisionist upswings in both the UMF and WFP are causing similar concerns. Hutchison’s agenda is aided by a shadowy group of supporters known as the Prophet’s Shield.
Unity - Strength - Faith
Northerners have a standard currency, the mark. Though most daily transactions are electronic in nature, hard currency is also available for use in smaller communities (or for shadowy dealings). The notes have a standard size (15 cm x 7 cm) and are often referred to as “rainbow money” because the bills progress along the colors of the light spectrum.
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