Gates of Haven - The Players (Patreon)

Note :

Sorry for no chapter today, there's just...too much on my plate.

Instead here's this lore file I was working on for Gates of Haven. Note that it is a Work In Progress and that nothing here is final. This mostly describes the various...well players, but it's more broad categories of who is what and why. It's basically to organize my thoughts on how the setting and its internal dynamics work.

There are a number of players in the Outskirts, the vast city surrounding Haven's walls. This will list the primary ones. There is no centralized government, due to the general reaction to Arcadia's dictatorship, and most forms of consolidated power beyond a few districts tends to be heavily unpopular.

The City Halls.

Controlling the major districts, the City Halls are the primary popular force. They may not have great resources, but they have manpower and have the backing of their citizens. The power of a City Hall varies wildly depending on their district, but they are never to be treated lightly. They are the local, civilian governments and thus most of their influence comes from their ability to sway a massive amount of buying power and access to internal markets. However, as a reaction to Arcadia's power and Haven's nature, City Halls tend to be very short on the traditional methods of exerting power governments had before the Fall. Law enforcement is a necessity and will be done, but it will be limited and military forces are almost always absent, except in the most deviant of districts.

The Corporations

Corporations have fingers in every pie and try to work in every sector. They own buildings, do security. Uphold the law with corposec hired by City Halls, or sell hitsquads. They have salvaging expeditions and Outstead farms. They build gunships and knock them out of the skies. In terms of hardware and raw resources, corporations outweigh everybody else.

It's people that are the problem. Humans left Haven to avoid living under the eye of Arcadia, and they are not enthused about trading an omniscient AI for corporate overlords. No one is really loyal to corporations, and their influence stops at the end of their lines of credit.

Nevertheless, they are able to wield considerable influence. While they do try to be in every sector, their main provider is industrial production. Corporations make all the new hardware in the Outskirts, and conduct a lot of research on reverse-engineering the technology from before the Fall. If someone needs industry, or the fruits thereof, as well as the best post-Fall hardware, they need to talk to a corp. There are districts who produce their own goods, but planned economies seldom end well.

The Cliques

Cliques are groups of individuals varying in size and purpose that differ from the others and don't quite fit into the molds. A Clique could be a gang robbing corporations, or a guild of trained technical personel. It's a catch all terms for the multitude of groups humans come up with to organize themselves, that yet aren't on a grand enough scale to truly weigh in on the Outskirts' politics. A gang may be powerful and terrorize a district, but even a minor corporation can crush them without thinking. A guild may be able to run a farm, but an Outstead would drown out their produce. Cliques are pawns and patsies for greater powers, not a power of their own.

The Convoys & Roadies

The Convoys are exactly what they sound like. Gigantic, nomadic convoys of rugged vehicles living outside city bounds. Their primary business is transportation to and from the city, out to the outsteads and the various salvage groups. Their ability to control the flow of goods make them startlingly powerful, and Convoys can range from a dozen vehicles doing small change on cargo runs to veritable armadas capable of carrying enough supplies to fuel a whole district for a year. People who choose the Convoy life are called Roadies. Even more independent minded than those living in the city, they tend to pride themselves on their work, their ceaseless movement to keep the scattered pockets of humanity communicating together, and enabling resupply of those who chose to live out into the wastes.

They are fairly popular, both in the city itself and especially out in the wastes, where they are the only lifeline many settlements have. Hitting a corpo in a bar will get people to back up lest they get caught in the retaliation. Hit a Roadie and bystanders will step up to be the retaliation.

Convoys don't have many people on their side, nor are they rich. What they do have however, is contacts and ways of getting things. Roadies knows who to talk to and are owed favors across the board. When a Convoy goes to war, it can acquire a startling amount of firepower and allies in very little time.

The term Roadie is both a play on the fact that they are constantly on the road, and the pre-Fall use of the term for technical personel supporting artistic tours. Since they see themselves as the often unseen, necessary cogs that make humanity run, just like old school Roadies were for concerts, they are rather proud of the moniker.

The Salvagers

Within the city, they would be called Scavengers. But outside of it, a bottom feeding group of rats suddenly becomes a valued and trusted profession. There are many reasons for that. One of them is the enormous demand for Pre-Fall technology. Another is that a Scav is just one step away from a thief, while a Salvager is more into archeology. Plus, survival out in the wastes demands trust, coordination and ironclad teamwork. Scavengers constantly backstab each other and their partners, Salvagers would die extraordinarily quickly if they even tried. Salvagers are even more tightly knit than Roadies, and many of them have a startling amount of technical knowledge.

The Outsteaders

A catch-all term for everyone living in a permanent settlement outside the city, it usually carries connotations of agriculture, but there are many Outsteads that derive their living from other activities, like raw materials extraction, energy generation, and even some industrial operations like salvaging, repairs, and even a bit of manufacturing.

In general, Outsteaders spend as little time in the city as possible, and usually only interact with it through Roadies and their Convoys. Nevertheless, they still can wield a considerable amount of power. While the city likes to think it is self sufficient, it is in truth anything but. A staggering amount of food and raw materials comes from Outsteads, and they are tightly interwoven into the city's economy, particularly the corporations. Outsteads are also critical bases of operations for Salvagers, and a good source of supplies.

Some Outsteads are called Waystations. Those usually cater to Convoys and Roadies, specializing in vehicle maintenance and overhauls. Due to this technical expertise, they also tend to be marketplaces where Salvagers bring their junk and tech. A few have full on bazaars in their own right.

The Raiders

When most city dwellers hear about raiders, they immediately imagine despoiling marauders wearing skulls and spikes. Which couldn't be farther from the truth. At least usually.

Raiders are, for all intents and purposes, armies for hire roving the wastes. While, like all armies before the twentieth century, they are known to resort to forcible conscription, pillage and 'requsitioning' resources from settlements, they do not leave a trail of wanton destruction. Rather most raider companies are here to fulfill a niche : far from the eyes of Haven, the rules are looser, and so are the purse strings of those who need their rivals hobbled. And levelling an Outstead fueling a corporation's industry or crippling a district's food supply is a lot easier (and sometimes cheaper) when done away from the city.

Raiders aren't disparate groups either. They are highly organized, as all must be to hope to survive out in the wastes, and some behave like condotierri or medieval lords, getting tribute from Outsteads in exchange for protection, while still loaning their swords to the highest bidder.

There is, however, one rule : Do not touch the Convoys. Outsteads are alone, lost in the wastes. Roadies can be bribed, they can be coerced, but destroy a Convoy and the gates of the city and every Outstead will close to you, as well as the purse of every Roadie. That is a death sentence for all but the most powerful of companies.