The Fallen Continent: Georgia
Home to daring visions of the future and old American throwbacks.
This article was written in collaboration with Jeff Haffley.1
Population: 400,000
Largest City: Gainesville
Other arms reach out to me,
Other eyes smile tenderly;
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.
Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find,
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
Introduction
Returning to the North American continent, Georgia is a state dominated by two rising titans, ready to challenge each other for dominance over the Deep South. All other statelets merely orbit around these two large factions, existing in their shadow.
Georgia has suffered much since the Great War, immediately losing its largest cities of Atlanta, Savannah, and Macon, among others. Athens survived the initial exchange and served as a new capital for the rump government, before it was annihilated a few weeks later. The state government in its original form ceased to exist, and the power vacuum was filled by a legion of militias and petty warlords. The era of total chaos has come to an end, but not at the cost of most of the state’s population and the subjugation of half of its inhabitants to a fascist dictatorship.
State of Georgia
Capital: Gainesville
Classification: Military Faction (Reformed military government)
Allegiance: Congress of Southern States
Had the Attorney General’s rump government survived the destruction of Athens, the natural first choice for a new capital would have been Gainesville, being close by and well-supplied, thanks to its hydroelectric dam and poultry farming industry. Paul Varney, a surviving colonel of the Georgia State Defense Force, certainly thought so, and established a safe zone around the city. By the end of the Starving Time, Gainesville became Georgia’s largest city, harboring 60,000 inhabitants.
Feeling that he had fulfilled his duty to the people under his care by guiding them through the Starving Time, Colonel Varney announced the creation of a new civilian government. Working with local officials and prominent citizens, he shaped a new State of Georgia from scratch and organized state elections, in which he ran for governor and won. Like other liberalized military governments, such as Hawaii, Cuba, and Elizabeth City, the military still retains considerable political influence, and military service is a necessary gateway into political participation.
In a moment of great serendipity, a similar phenomenon occurred across the Savannah River in South Carolina. There, the far-right Southern Constitutional Militia took charge, but experienced a liberalizing thaw. What began as simple mutual non-aggression grew into trade, cooperation, and then a full alliance between the two powers. This alliance laid the framework for what later became the Congress of Southern States, a confederal body that governs interactions between southern state factions in lieu of the federal government. The CSS has since grown to include the State of Alabama (Selma), the State of Mississippi (Hattiesburg), the Continuity State of Florida, and the Real State of North Carolina, with Tennessean members pending.
The Congress of Southern States
The CSS isn’t a centralized faction itself, but closely coordinates the movements of its constituent polities. These polities exist in three groups: the eastern CSS (Georgia and South Carolina, “the Big Two”), the western CSS (Alabama and Mississippi; Alabama is sometimes included with Georgia and South Carolina as “the Big Three), and the outliers (Florida and North Carolina). While for the western and outlying states the CSS is little more than a foreign policy vehicle, it does actually inform on domestic affairs for the Big Two. So far, its powers resemble those of the old Articles of Confederation government in the 18th century, as its decision-making powers are weak and confined to advisory roles. There are, however, plans to overhaul the CSS into a more centralized, pan-Southern government.
CSS factions ride the line between democracy and authoritarianism. The Big Two are thawed authoritarian governments making their forays back into democracy. Alabama’s government is nominally democratic but restrained by a perpetual state of emergency and entrenched oligarchy, and Mississippi is an Alabaman puppet state. Both of the outlier states are warlords that want on the CSS bandwagon, and are only allowed in because the Big Two need someone to work with. Insofar as there are plans to democratize the CSS, they involve the vague ideal of “Southern democracy,” or even “Jacksonian democracy” at the more extreme end.
Georgian Democracy
The late Colonel Varney is no longer governor, but his political dynasty endures through the governorship of his adoptive son, Kit Varney. His successor is an entirely capable figure, but lacks the charisma and magnetism that made his foster father so popular. Attempts to bolster his popularity by promoting a cult of personality for his father—who is deservedly revered as the CSS’ foremost founding father—have unfortunately resulted in Kit’s being labelled “Varney the Lesser” due to his shorter stature and more unassuming demeanor.
Varney II sits at the head of the Georgia Republican Party, which is not a direct continuation of its antebellum predecessor. The Republicans favor militarism, expansionism, a more centralized CSS government, agrarian populism, and paternalistic rationing policies. They are tightly oriented around the Varney family and the surrounding clique of State Defense Force and National Guard officers that initially supported him. In opposition to the Republicans is the spirited Whig Party, a more libertarian faction that advocates a decentralized, confederal CSS, a less centralized military that delegates more responsibility to the militias, more measured territorial expansion (or even none at all), diplomatic outreach both to other American factions and foreign countries, urban industrial development, and a hands-off rationing policy that borders on Social Darwinism.
Although the Republicans dominate the state government, the Whigs are rapidly rising in popularity thanks to Varney the Lesser’s lack of favor with the masses and the rise of a new industrial elite in Gainesville. The Whigs and the Republicans both ardently oppose the Fraternal American Republic and are committed to expanding their coalition to counter the FAR’s expansion, but in all other respects a Whig victory could drastically alter the course of the Gainesville government and the Congress as a whole.
Appalachian Free State
Capital: Asheville, North Carolina
Classification: Local Government (Expanded municipal government)
Though mostly based in North Carolina, the Appalachian Free State also controls a portion of northern Georgia, mostly the lands surrounding the Chattahoochee National Forest. The Free State’s Georgian cities, like Blairsville and Helen, are administered just like any other city up north. The AFS’ outlying territories were never conquered outright as an exercise in deliberate expansionism, but were peacefully incorporated after the towns gradually became dependent on Asheville for trade, defense, and leadership. Asheville views their frontier territories as valuable buffer regions to shelter their core territory in North Carolina; even if they have no desire to conquer Georgia, Asheville is not keen on giving up their southern marches.
The Gainesville government may not approve of Asheville’s encroachment into Georgia, but it lacks the resources and the will to make an enemy out of the Free State. Relations between the CSS and AFS have grown even icier since the admission of the “Real State of North Carolina” in Pinehurst to the Congress, and tensions are rising as the CSS and FAR prepare for a grand showdown. The Appalachians want to prevent a Georgian titan from emerging and are trying to orchestrate affairs so that Gainesville and Cordele can grind each other to dust. This outlook has gained them an unlikely ally in the form of the Confederate States of America to the southwest.
Confederate States of America
This segment includes contributions from Jeff Haffley.
Capital: Rome
Classification: Right-Wing Ideological Faction (Right-wing separatist republic)
In the aftermath of the old United States’ collapse, it was a practical certainty that some groups would seek to resurrect the Confederate States of America. There were several attempts to do so, during the period of anarchy that gripped the South for the first fifteen years following the Great War. Like the numerous little USAs, Republics of Texas, and Kingdoms of God, most of these factions were ill-fated, ephemeral statelets founded by petty warlords whose regimes crumbled faster than the radiation in their home towns could decay. Most of the little CSAs bore no actual resemblance to the actual 19th Century Confederacy, other than a fondness for the Confederate flag and, perhaps for whipping people and putting them in bondage. Only one faction made any sincere effort to reconstruct the Confederate States, and that is the only CSA faction extant today: the Confederate States of America in Rome, Georgia.
Origins of the New Confederacy
The CSA’s rebirth in Rome wasn’t merely a nostalgic nod to the past, but a calculated move rooted in geography, ideology, and opportunity. Here in the Georgian foothills of the Appalachians, the seeds for a new Confederacy were sown even before the bombs fell. During the Great 21st Century Crisis, extreme right-wing militia groups sprang up throughout the country and began to challenge government authorities for dominance. The most famous of these was the Northwest Volunteer Army, which actually got into a shooting war with the government and later gave rise to the Northwest American Republic, which still dominates the Pacific Northwest to this day.
The southern militia movement was not quite as strong, but still laid the framework for several extant factions today. The largest of these was the Southern Constitutional Militia, which gave rise to the Fraternal American Republic. Its main competitor was the League of the South, a white nationalist organization that advocated Southern independence. The SCM was less overtly racial, and wanted to bring about change within the United States, rather than secede from it. The League of the South struggled to keep up with the SCM and certain other extremist groups during the Great 21st Century Crisis, but the neo-Confederate movement was given a new lease on life when its Georgian chapters split off to form the Southern Independence League.
The SIL gained a dedicated following among disaffected blue collar workers in Georgia’s rusting industrial towns throughout the northwest of the state. When the dust of the Great War settled, the SIL initially bided its time, but sprang into action as soon as the rump government in Athens was destroyed. After initially seizing the town of Dalton, the SIL fought a slow campaign of conquest throughout the north, battling petty warlords and Atlantan refugee gangs (one of their foes, ironically enough, was one of the CSA pretender warlords) before finally moving their capital to Rome to proclaim the reborn CSA, also called the New Confederacy. The New Confederacy was given a constitution modeled on the United States Constitution (the original CSA’s strict term limits and ban on all political parties felt too alien), but with substantial moderations to “accommodate the realities of the post-nuclear age.”
The Slavery Question
Despite its ideological roots in the Old South and the polarizing 21st Century Crisis, the modern CSA took some surprising turns. Slavery, a cornerstone of the original Confederacy, was explicitly abolished in the new constitution—a decision the first president of the revived CSA loudly trumpeted as a sign of the Confederacy’s “moral progress.” Such a decision was necessary to deter widespread fears that Rome would bring back actual chattel slavery for African-Americans. This obviously wasn’t happening, but the abolition was nonetheless largely symbolic.
The vast majority of postwar factions have employed some kind of forced labor or stratified servitude to prop up their economies and get people back in the agricultural sector—where the vast majority of Americans still work to this day. In the new CSA, this was accomplished through draconian vagrancy laws imposed on unskilled white refugees and political dissidents. Racial minorities, meanwhile, were expelled from the country’s borders. The American Empire is a state where white leadership wants to rule over blacks as cheap labor; the New Confederacy simply doesn’t want to live around blacks at all.
New Confederate Governance
The government of the New Confederacy curiously blends antebellum and modern concepts of decentralization and authoritarian rule. Each individual county is an independent Confederate state (a provisional measure until the CSA can get on its feet; theoretically they shall all combine into Georgia again at some point), with its own county militia. This reflects the decentralized structure of the SIL militia while satisfying the popular Southern desire for devolved government. Although the militias have free reign at the local level, they are reined in by a strong central executive: the Supreme Court.
In a subtle but profoundly impactful constitutional revision, the Chief Justice was granted the powers of pardon—previously the president’s prerogative—and the authority to nominate his own successor. Serving for life, the office of Chief Justice effectively became that of a constitutional monarch, and grew to overshadow the more transient and increasingly ceremonial presidency.
The current Chief Justice, the respected E.B. Frost, has held his position for nearly a decade, having succeeded his father in the role. The House of Frost, as it is colloquially known, wields immense power; every Confederate president has thus far been a Frost or a close family friend. With successive presidents so closely aligned with the Chief Justice, the office can be likened to that of consuls under the Roman Emperor. The powers of the presidency during one’s term are less important than the legal privileges one gains as a private civilian after the term expires: the “dignity of a former President,” including legal immunity, a handsome pension, and guaranteed militia appointments. Most Confederate presidents become more powerful as county commissioners after their term expires than when they held the country’s second-highest office.
The Chief Justice not only interprets the constitution but also controls the awarding of the Confederacy’s highest honors, such as the Confederate Medal of Honor for military service and the Order of Justice for civic contributions. This consolidation of judicial and ceremonial power ensures that the CSA, while ostensibly a confederation of states, functions more like a monarchy under Frost’s reign.
New Confederate Culture
The CSA prides itself on preserving what it sees as the best traditions of the Old South. This includes a staunch adherence to Anglo-Celtic cultural norms, a fierce spirit of individualism, and an economy that balances agriculture with industrial development. The standard of living in the CSA is high for southeast American standards, with good access to public utilities for their size. Funny enough, their rosy admiration of the past involves just as much 20th Century ideation as it does the 19th Century; New Confederate leadership likens themselves to the USA of the 1970s, viewed nostalgically as the last days of American glory before its decline into the darkness of the 21st Century.
Though the New Confederacy is small in size, ideologically austere, and idiosyncratic in governance, it is one of the most stable regimes in the South and punches above its weight in terms of military strength and economic output. It is strong in terms of internal cohesion, but its extreme ideological positions and harsh treatment of outsiders has left the Confederacy rigid, insular, and severely wanting for diplomatic options.
New Confederate Military
Having inherited the militia structure from the SIL before it, the New Confederate military is mostly made up of irregular militias that supplement a small professional core. The militia reserves belong to the individual counties, who can be called upon to raise the “Army of Northern Georgia” in times of war. Post-apocalyptic roll calls are never precise, and the ANG can range in size from 1,000 to 5,000 men when mobilized. The pride of the Confederate military is their small force of professional regulars, the Stonewall Brigade (an undersized unit of about 300-500 men). These troops are trained in guerilla tactics and can take full advantage of northern Georgia’s uneven, wooded terrain. Supplementing the Stonewall Brigade and Army of Northern Georgia is a transient population of mercenaries that sell their services to the highest bidder. North Georgian mercenaries are sought out by factions throughout the state and beyond, and Rome spares no expense to keep them on their side when the need arises.
Confederate Foreign Policy
Diplomatically, the CSA walks a careful tightrope at all times. They are only the third strongest faction in a fractured, war-torn state, and they are not well liked by the bigger two powers. Rome fiercely opposes integration into both the CSS and the FAR, and have bad blood with both factions dating to before the Great War. As a final confrontation between the two powers grows ever-closer, the CSA has a limited range of time in which it can build up its forces and try to influence the outcome. If they swallow their pride and commit to a side, they could easily play kingmaker for Gainesville or Cordele. Should they remain independent, there is a slimmer chance that they can exploit the conflict and come out on top as the masters of Georgia. Both the CSS and FAR, despite their own grudges towards Rome, fully understand the Confederacy’s ability to tip the balance, and each faction has plans to either court or neutralize them in the near future.
In the meantime, they have few options for expansion. The same blanket of fallout that insulated them in the early years has now caged them in and prevented them from gobbling up the last small warlord states in Georgia. Their best bet for conquest is the USA-Gadsden across state lines; Gadsden is a multiracial faction that received the lion’s share of the African-Americans displaced by the Confederacy and naturally despises them. Gadsden is also small and isolated enough that it will be a fair fight, yet still not an easy one.
The closest thing the CSA has to an ally is the Appalachian Free State. Asheville isn’t keen on their white nationalist extremism, but they view them as a useful counterweight against the CSS and a stable frontier that they can ignore while they focus on expansion in North Carolina. The AFS is also just as scared of the FAR or CSS dominating Georgia as the CSA is, and want to prevent any one faction from snowballing in power. To this end, they have an embassy in Rome and a small military mission to train up the Army of Northern Georgia, along with plans to support them in an invasion of Gadsden.
CSA Conclusions
The revived Confederate States of America stands as a paradoxical entity—rooted in the past yet adapted to the harsh realities of the post-nuclear world. Its rigid ideology, strong leadership under the House of Frost, and efficient military structure have allowed it to thrive where many other postwar regimes have faltered. However, its insularity, racial policies, and refusal to engage more broadly with neighboring powers limit its potential for expansion and long-term survival. The CSA remains a formidable, if isolated, power in the Southeast, a testament to the enduring legacy of the Old South in the ashes of the old America.
Vince Tiller
This segment includes contributions from Jeff Haffley.
Capital: Newnan
Classification: Warlord (Transitioning legitimist warlord)
Although America remains a chaotic patchwork of gangs and warlords, the days of true anarchy have largely passed into the annals of history—save for a few truly desolate regions like the Badlands and the Mid-Atlantic. The Deep South’s days of anarchy are coming to an end, and the old warlords and gangs are now being brought to heel by the most powerful, established factions. It comes as a surprise, then, that a petty warlord like Vince Tiller could rise to power so suddenly.
Vince Tiller is a relative newcomer to the warlord scene. An Atlanta native, he survived the bombs as a child and was taken prisoner by one of the smaller outcast gangs that wasn’t even strong enough to break out of the Greater Atlanta NEZ. By gaining his captors’ trust, however, he rose through the gang’s ranks and eventually turned the tables on them, becoming their leader. In the wake of the rise of the Fraternal American Republic, the petty warlords south of the Atlanta NEZ were overrun by rival gangs, seeking to escape the wrath of the Cordele regime. Tiller sensed an opportunity and struck them from the north, leaving the Atlanta wasteland behind and putting down new roots in Newnan; all this occurred less than five years ago.
The Shift Towards Legitimism
Having witnessed the fruits of petty warlordism, Tiller was not content to rule through brute force alone. The standard legitimist route of hijacking the local government wasn’t an option, because decades of despotism had erased whatever vestiges of civilian government that survived the bombs themselves. He would have to start from scratch. He began with concessions to the local population, opening up his gang’s ranks and allowing the grunts to elect their own officers. Having integrated the locals, he established a new municipal government for Newnan. Up to this point, his nameless gang (or “the Vince Tiller gang,” when a name was really necessary) was nothing but an ad hoc band of fighters personally loyal to him, or at least to his promises of payment. Now they were tied to a specific locality and an office beyond a simple boss.
This municipal government is really just an extension of the gang, and the city council members are all gang leaders, but Tiller does allow the populace to vote in elections, which are heavily rigged. The nearby town of Peachtree City, also under his rule, was given its own government with elections, on the condition that they owe him their allegiance. Effectively, all of Peachtree City’s leaders are hand-picked by Tiller, but the city is loyal. This move towards civilian government is accompanied by a general crackdown on violent offenders within the gang as Tiller attempts to clean up his act; outsiders from civilized factions still see them as brutish warlords, but it’s a significant improvement over the region’s previous rulers.
The Newnan Economy
Remembering his roots as an Exclusion Zone gang, Tiller also proclaimed a Newnan monopoly over all salvage within the Greater Atlanta NEZ. This is more of an aspirational goal than a political reality, as the CSA and Gainesville government project power into the region, and there still remain small holdout gangs living unhappily within the irradiated zone. Nevertheless, Tiller has an active interest in salvage as a pillar of his economy, while Rome and Gainesville simply view the NEZ as a buffer region. Tiller has made wild promises of land reclamation, but such endeavors really won’t be economically viable even for great powers until the 22nd Century.
The monopoly’s most important accomplishment is its role in the institutionalization of Tiller’s rule. The public can buy shares in salvage expeditions and earn dividends of the profit, encouraging investment in the regime and building up its aspiring legitimist image. What salvage they can find from the sprawling NEZ is shipped abroad via overland routes and the strategic, though much-diminished Tiller-Frost Airport (formerly the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, renamed in honor of himself and his Neo-Confederate father-in-law). Despite being located deep within the Atlanta NEZ, the airport got off surprisingly well during the Great War and was in sufficiently good condition for Tiller’s reclamation crews to repair it to working order. Although wasteland bartertowns, much like petty warlord gangs, are typically on the decline, Newnan is on the up and up as a promising commercial center throughout the American Southeast.
Looking Outward
Tiller’s ultimate goal is to build up Newnan as an oligarchic, mercantile city-state and a central locus for Southeastern trade, with business carefully regulated by his local enforcers. Given the rising tensions between Georgia’s power players, this dream will take a good deal of diplomatic wheedling to pull off. He knows the FAR is loth to deal with him, and promising the people protection against the FAR is what won Tiller much of his public support in the first place. Therefore, his best bet is to find an ally in either the CSS or CSA.
Tiller’s personal life underscores his strategic acumen in his attempts to court the CSA. He strategically (some suspect cynically) converted to a rather conservative strain of Presbyterianism and won the favor of Confederate Chief Justice E.B. Frost by marrying his daughter, securing a valuable arms deal with the Neo-Confederates in the process. To appease Gainesville, Tiller has promised a new constitution with “free” and “honest” elections to be adopted in the coming months and signed a bilateral pact establishing joint NEZ patrols with the Georgia State Defense Force. With some luck, Tiller can successfully play the two powers off of each other while directing both of them to beat back the FAR, securing Newnan’s place as Georgia’s golden city.
The Road Ahead
Vince Tiller’s journey from gang leader to aspiring statesman is emblematic of the fluid and unpredictable nature of post-war America. His ability to navigate the treacherous waters of warlord politics while fostering economic growth and forging strategic alliances speaks to a rare combination of intelligence, pragmatism, and ambition.
Yet Tiller’s future remains uncertain. His delicate balancing act between the CSS and CSA—all while appeasing the local population and averting direct conflict with the FAR—could easily unravel if any of these forces perceive him as a threat or a liability. The promised shift toward democratic governance may win him popular support, but it could also provoke powerful enemies who thrive on authoritarian control, or even allow true democratic reformers to get their foot in the door and oust him from power altogether.
In the volatile landscape of the Southeast, Vince Tiller represents both the potential for renewal and the ever-present danger of collapse. Whether he will emerge as a legitimate ruler or fall victim to the very forces he seeks to outmaneuver remains to be seen. One thing is certain: Vince Tiller is a man to watch in the coming years, as his choices will shape not only his own destiny but the fate of the region he seeks to govern.
Nancy Hart Rifles
This segment includes contributions from Jeff Haffley.
Capital: Griffin
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Militia regime)
Griffin, much like Newnan and Covington, was another one of those misfortunate towns to be just far enough away from a major city to escape atomic annihilation, yet near enough to achieve total upheaval. The mass of feuding refugees streaming out of Atlanta led to the destruction and depopulation of several outlying cities, including McDonough and its environs straddling I-75. Southwest of this desolation was Griffin, whose native population was displaced by the upstart warlord Ty Guthrie and the refugees that followed him out of the Atlantan ashlands.
Guthrie forged this haggard band of destitute sojourners into a proper warlord army, with which he built a little empire for himself throughout central Georgia. Among his conquests were Thomaston, LaGrange, Newnan, and Peachtree City (the latter two towns eventually falling under the control of Vince Tiller, many years later). This was back in the Starving Time, very early on when even the neo-feudal warlord structure hadn’t quite crystallized, and millions of desperate refugees flocked to the ephemeral banners of any warlord that could promise them survival. To achieve his dream of subjugating all of Georgia beneath his iron fist, Guthrie pressed virtually all of Griffin’s male population into military service. Fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands all filled his ranks, that they might march on Covington and then march on Gainesville and take the rest of Georgia for their master.
Fate had other plans. The petty warlord of Covington laid a cunning trap for the Atlantan exiles and slew the entire host. Ty Guthrie was killed, along with the entire male population of Griffin, Georgia. Guthrie’s empire crumbled overnight, and its constituent towns descended into feudal warfare for the following decades. Griffin, a hollowed-out city of only women and their dependents, was ripe for the taking. Yet no other warlord has since captured it.
The Fairer Sex
Given the extent of sex-based violence that followed the Great War that has deprived most women (and, admittedly, most men) of their political and social rights, female-led factions are exceedingly rare throughout the wasteland. The Nancy Hart Rifles are the curious exception, and defy most expectations as to what a female army would look like.
The women of Griffin, most of them related to Guthrie’s band of Atlantan emigres, began to organize soon after the death of their former leader. They feared conquest by the neighboring cities, but most of all dreaded the revenge of the NEZ gangs that Guthrie had banished years earlier. They named their newly-founded militia after a rifle company of the same name dating back to the American Civil War; the original Nancy Hart Rifles were formed by the women of LaGrange, Georgia, in anticipation of the Union invasion, but were never tested in battle. They, in turn, were named for Nancy Morgan Hart, a heroine of the Revolutionary War.
The Rifles’ resolve was tested by the onslaught of the Ashen Army, a vicious NEZ gang from the Atlanta wasteland bent on taking Griffin for themselves. When the dust had settled, the invaders were repelled, and the Nancy Hart Rifles had entrenched themselves as the ruling authority of the city.
Militia Rule
Since their first victory, the Nancy Hart Rifles have governed Griffin much as any other militia faction would. Plain and simple warlordism gave way to a more organized government in the legitimist fashion, and the ad hoc militia company hardened itself into a little army in its own right. At the top of this system is the Rifles’ venerable matriarch Mama Michelle, a much-respected septuagenarian and the oldest female leader on the continent. After twenty years of careful guidance, Mama seems destined to die in this role, and her successors have ambitious plans for the city’s future.
A generation has since grown up under the watch of the Nancy Harts. The male population of Spalding County has largely recovered, and with their return has come the repeal of several emergency measures. Polygyny was once legalized in Spalding County to assist in its repopulation, allowing three wives for every man. Three years ago, this statute was amended and is now being grandfathered out—no doubt to the frustration of some young men and the relief of others. The men of Spalding County are eager to take back leadership from the women and have recently started jockeying for power. They’ve established a men’s auxiliary wing of the Nancy Hart Rifles, the Hardee Brigade,2 which is projected to outnumber the Nancy Harts within a few years.
Griffin itself will likely return to male leadership in the coming years, but the current gynocracy is not content to surrender everything they’ve gained. They’ve caught the attention of the mighty Fraternal American Republic, and most notably its influential society of female elites, the Georgian Belles. The Belles are a small clique of wealthy, landowning widows that have benefitted from the FAR’s surprisingly egalitarian inheritance laws. The warlike nature of the Spartanist republic has created a snowball effect for these women to inherit and purchase more and more property, and they’ve become a powerful voice that Commander Quade cannot ignore. The Belles admire the resolve of the Nancy Hart Rifles and hope that they may set an example for the FAR’s female population.
The Nancy Harts, for their part, are well-disposed to the FAR’s intensely militarized character and admire Calvin Quade’s decisive leadership over the plodding Gainesville establishment. Rather than simply surrender power to the men of Spalding County, the heirs of Mama Michelle hope to transfer leadership over to the FAR, while preserving their own authority by creating a new all-female legion in the Fraternal army. Should this plan go through, the Nancy Hart Rifles will find themselves in the vanguard of any Fraternal expansion north into CSS territory.
Also on the subject of foreign policy: Nancy Hart Rifles have long harbored a grudge against Newnan and Peachtree City, which the rise of Vince Tiller did little to quell. This rivalry has only simmered down by the intervention of Confederate ruler E.B. Frost, a friend of Mama Michelle who brokered a peace on Tiller’s behalf. Given the conflicting trajectory of both factions—Newnan to Gainesville and Griffin to Cordele—it is unlikely the peace will outlive the Nancy Harts’ matriarch.
Fraternal American Republic
Capital: Cordele
Classification: Right-Wing Ideological Faction (Spartanist dictatorship)
The Fraternal American Republic is the country that millions feared would emerge in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The self-proclaimed “American Sparta” has roots that predate the Great War, going back to the Southeast Constitutional Militia that once threatened the US government’s monopoly on violence during the Great 21st Century Crisis of the 2020s. The SCM was extreme when compared to mainstream American politics, but its moderation compared to other militias is what helped it to get so far. Without leaning into fully white nationalist rhetoric, the SCM was able to gain a foothold throughout the American South by winning over quiet sympathizers among conservative politicians and law enforcement. It never quite reached the prominence of the Northwest Volunteer Army in the Pacific Northwest, but many were worried that they could bring a shooting war to the heart of Dixie if the Crisis escalated any further.
In the absence of state authority following the Great War, the SCM was naturally one of the front runners to reestablish order across the South. The SCM adopted an increasingly survivalist bent before the Great War, anticipating that just such a catastrophe would occur and preparing for it accordingly. Moreover, its decentralized, relatively moderate nature allowed it to easily absorb surviving local governments, especially among law enforcement. The SCM in Georgia got its first big boost when Major Rutland Stanton of the Georgia State Defense Force defected to their side. It wasn’t for ideological reasons—he just didn’t like Colonel Varney requisitioning his troops and supplies and wanted to switch to a side that would respect his independence.
Unfortunately, the decentralized character of the SCM lead to its downfall, as rival chapters feuded with one another and dissenters broke off to form their own factions. Defectors to the SIL helped found the New Confederacy, and the South Carolinian branch cut all ties with the rest of the SCM when it founded its own state government. The Alabama and Florida branches were wiped out, and throughout Georgia local militia captains split off to rule their own fiefdoms as petty warlords. By the end of the Starving Time, the SCM was less unified than ever before, and was poised to collapse under its own lack of internal cohesion. The Southeast Constitutional Militia would have gone down in history as a footnote, were it not for the work of one man.
Commander Quade
Calvin Quade was a university student at Georgia State, driving south to visit his family in Valdosta when the bombs fell. Both Atlanta and Valdosta were destroyed, and Calvin was left alone. He fell in with Hail Caesar 83, a vigilante gang that was patrolling I-75 against the marauding bands of convicts that escaped from the McRae Correctional Facility. HC83 was assimilated into the SCM towards the end of the Starving Time, hovering in and out of its sphere of influence as a unit of questionable loyalty. Quade, however, was unwaveringly loyal to the SCM as his adoptive family, and made great efforts to improve his unit’s cohesion and discipline.
Within the militia, Quade demonstrated great proficiency in tactics, organization, and leadership, which allowed him to rise through the ranks in his early twenties. Quade’s leadership was instrumental in helping the SCM surmount tough obstacles one after another, such as the escaped McRae convicts, mutinous SCM captains, and vengeful state troopers. He eventually rose to the position of District Captain of Cordele, reporting directly to the Captain-General in Waycross. Quade was the Militia’s rising star and electrified the people with his powerful rhetoric and radical far-right positions. His extremism was seemingly vindicated through clashes with Georgia’s multitudes of warlords and raiders, including a stubborn black nationalist warlord from Americus.
Quade rose further, leading entire armies throughout the state, conquering vast swathes of territory for the militia. He advocated for the centralization of the SCM into a single modern army that could serve as the backbone of a militaristic, nationalistic, and effectively fascist state. Militia leadership grew worried, but Quade had the people and the common soldiers at his back, and made a bold play for leadership. Under the pretense that SCM leadership was plotting to surrender to the CSS, Quade launched a coup and captured Waycross and its Captain-General. The coup successfully landed Quade in power, but it triggered a series of mutinies and defections among the less loyal captains. Some tried to split off as petty warlords, but the main body of conservative mutineers joined the New Army in southern Georgia, effectively instigating a civil war in the SCM.
Quade and his radicals spent the following years quashing the mutiny and cleaning up the mess it had left behind throughout central and southern Georgia. He couldn’t quite root out the New Army, but he eventually brokered a peace in which Thomasville handed over some of its most prominent mutineers for Quade to punish. Shortly after the peace was signed, Quade held a congress in Cordele and proclaimed the birth of the Fraternal American Republic: a new American state for a new age, one forged from iron and blood.
The American Sparta
Where the SCM once lacked a coherent ideological platform, the Fraternal American Republic has built a new one from scratch. Having fully centralized the SCM into a top-down post-apocalyptic army, Supreme Commander Quade has extended this order to the entire state. Vestigial civilian elements have been altogether dispensed with and are not even retained for ceremonial purposes. Political parties are outlawed, but the small body of FAR citizens functions as its own political power bloc, and citizenry is contingent upon loyal military service. The two ideological pillars of the FAR are its intended likeness to ancient Sparta and Commander Quade’s cult of personality. Like Sparta, the FAR is a militarized society led by a warrior elite. It can also be compared to New Mexico’s George Washington Legion, although the FAR is far more centralized and racial issues are less central to their platform.
The FAR is a racist, white supremacist state, but is not race-focused in the same manner as the Northwest American Republic or the American Empire. That is to say, it is accessory and not essential to their regime. Borrowing from the fire-eating slavery apologists of the 19th Century, blacks and other racial minorities are held with disdain as the “mudsills of society,” the servile dregs that provide the foundations upon which the better part of society can exist and prosper. They haven’t explicitly revived slavery, but the modern mudsills are kept in de facto economic servitude to support the citizenry. Unlike the South of past centuries, this order is not maintained solely through race-based suffrage, and there are more than enough poor white laborers to fill the ranks of the mudsills. All citizens are white, but not all whites are citizens; not all mudsills are black, but all blacks are mudsills. In effect, Fraternal citizens are Spartiates, and the mudsills are the helots. The FAR never underwent racial cleansing as a matter of deliberate policy, but their effective policies and years of warfare that generally followed racial lines ultimately resulted in a mass exodus of blacks from central and southern Georgia for other states and factions. To counteract this massive population loss, the FAR has invited white refugees, captured mudsill slaves of various races from enemy factions, and above all else, has introduced incentives to raise the birthrate.
One of the other qualifiers for Fraternal citizenship is to be married or widowed and to have produced at least three children. Financial and political incentives have also been offered to women to encourage them to marry and have children, and the result is a fascist state with surprisingly egalitarian sexual politics. Women cannot serve in the army and thus cannot attain citizenship, but they can own property (which they can inherit equally alongside men, with no preference for either sex) and enjoy more legal protections than are offered in many warlord states. Given the intensely militarized condition of the FAR, many young women end up as widows inheriting their husbands’ and sons’ properties, and there is an influential cadre of powerful matriarchal landholders called the Georgian Belles that bankroll the Cordele regime. With the support of the Belles and the Nancy Hart Rifles, Quade is considering proposals to establish a female rifle regiment.
As Supreme Commander, Calvin Quade’s power is essentially unchecked. Both the War Council, which leads the military, and the Civic Council, which is responsible for government, exist at Quade’s discretion and ultimately only serve in an advisory capacity to their supreme dictator. For as much as Quade serves as a fascist dictator, he can also be likened to an absolutist monarch; his principal ambition is to establish an unprecedented level of control over his domain to an extent that most warlords could only dream of.
It takes some time to achieve this result, however, and the FAR has entered a period of hibernation since it last signed peace with the New Army. The current order of the day is to complete Quade’s centralizing reforms and fully transform the FAR into an army with a state. As fearsome as Quade’s army is, it lacks much in the way of administrative efficiency, and they certainly don’t have much going for them in the way of diplomacy.
The Cordelian League
The FAR is rather solipsistic in regards to foreign policy. They detest the Congress of Southern States, hold out-of-state Yankees and racial minorities in contempt, distrust the neo-Confederates, and make clear their intentions to crush minor warlords. Quade is a sabre-rattler but he is not a fool, and he understands the severity of his increasingly isolated position. While he’s been hunkering down and solidifying his control over his own domain, the CSS has been gathering allies that could encircle and envelop the Georgian republic.
To rectify this diplomatic imbalance, Quade founded the Cordelian League as the alliance system that ties together his few remote supporters. Although the FAR itself is totally centralized and unitary, League members enjoy autonomy that would otherwise never be granted to them. Continuing with the Spartan theme, if the citizenry are the Spartiates and the mudsills the helots, then the League can be likened to the Perioeci and the Peloponnesian League. Currently, the only members of the League are the Nancy Hart Rifles (which will probably just be directly integrated into the Republic as a female rifle regiment at the behest of the Belles) and the Florida Republic (a de facto independent state that has hitched themselves to the Cordelian wagon). The FAR dislikes the CSA, but they are keeping their options open with potential League membership for them just in case they really do need their help.
The League is still far more centralized than the Congress of Southern States and will never fully compensate for the FAR’s diplomatic deficiencies. But it at least fills in the gap left by their lack of extra-factional support. The rest, they’ll have to make up for by sheer martial prowess and Spartan strength of will.
The New Army
Capital: Thomasville
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Neo-nomadic army)
In the days of the Great 21st Century Crisis before the Great War, sparsely-populated regions like southern Georgia were left neglected and fell victim to organized crime. These included ethnic gangs, such as the encroaching Latin-American drug cartels, but also counted American organized crime groups. One such group active in southern Georgia was the Florida-Georgia Mob, a rejuvenated offshoot of the late 20th Century Dixie Mafia. Southern Georgia became a hotspot for FGM activity, and many underfunded and undermanned Sheriff’s departments and police forces were infiltrated by gangsters.
In a too-little, too-late attempt to break up the gang from within, the FBI sent in undercover informants of their own; among them was Duncan “the Boz” Bosworth, who had fallen in with the mob shortly before the bombs fell. Even if there had remained a headquarters for him to report back to, Bosworth was not interested in following the dictates of the state after the apocalypse. Instead, he fully embraced the gang life and rose up its ranks as they took the path of warlordism during the Starving Time.
Over the course of this period, the Florida-Georgia Mob was molded by Bosworth’s preferences into a more militaresque organization resembling militia and vigilante factions. Through extortion rackets and by offering protection against rivals, Bosworth’s gang developed a sphere of influence throughout southern Georgia, with loyal towns regularly offering tribute to his roaming army. As the gang grew, absorbed other gangs, and exacted a tithe of manpower from the tributary towns, it grew into a proper neo-nomadic army and shed its old mobster trappings. Coming out of the Starving Time, the Boz was now General of the New Army, a powerful warlord army that then overshadowed the Gainesville government and the SCM’s Georgian chapter.
The Roving Army
The New Army went far, trading blows with both the SCM and the Real America further south in Florida, but they never put down roots quite like the SCM did. As radical currents began to spread in the SCM, Bosworth grew worried. He made peace with moderate SCM leadership in Waycross, hoping that it would free up resources for the Captain-General to smother the flames and keep the SCM decentralized. In the meantime, he diverted his attentions towards the war in Florida in a long, vicious, and ultimately futile feud with the Real America. Unfortunately for Bosworth, Quade’s Spartanists continued to gather momentum up north, while the Cuban exiles stole the Florida Panhandle right when the New Army was on the verge of a breakthrough.
Following Quade’s takeover of the SCM, Bosworth took up arms in defense of the rightful Captain-General, absorbing most of the SCM conservative establishment in the process. Several years of warfare resulted in the loss of Waycross and the transfer of SCM mutineers into the custody of the Fraternal American Republic (most of whom were subsequently executed after a series of showy court-martials). The New Army has persisted in languor ever since as a rump state, insofar as it is a state at all. The New Army is a stubborn holdout of the old days of roving armies, but it is finally ossifying into a state-like faction, even if the reforms are too little, too late. Bosworth and the majority of his troops now spend half the year quartered in Thomasville, and the local towns are proper subjects rather than mere tributaries having to surrender payment.
The aged and diminished Bosworth is ready to give up, but his younger officers still have plans for the future. The New Army is in dire danger of envelopment by the FAR and Florida Republic, but by getting on board with the USAIE and its West Florida Liberated Zone, they could preempt that envelopment and gain new allies as a rival Georgian state government. Such a maneuver worked for the Floridian government in Winter Haven, and it just might work for Thomasville.
Sigma
Capital: Fargo
Classification: Warlord (Personalistic warlord gang)
Sigma is one of the last of the old breed of warlords from the era of total anarchy and chaos that once gripped the Deep South. There used to be dozens of little factions just like his scattered throughout central and southern Georgia, but now he’s the only one left. Sigma is good at what he does and has survived up to this point for a reason, even if he was never powerful enough to make it as one of the big shots up north. He enjoys the respect (if not love) of the people of Fargo thanks to his level-headed rule and sharp thinking.
The gang used to make a living by fencing salvaged goods and raider loot across the state line into Florida, but that avenue has since been shut off from them, thanks to the USA-in-Exile’s crackdown on Floridian contraband and the rise of the FAR. The Cordelian League which unites the FAR with the Florida Republic now threatens to totally envelop Fargo, leaving Sigma’s gang without many options. Once Sigma falls, the discordant day of the Southeastern Anarchy will pass out of this world and into the dusty tomes of history.
Circle of Death
Capital: Lyons
Classification: Warlord (Vigilante gang)
After the Great War, the Corrections Corporation of America tried to run the town of McRae-Helena like a private fiefdom from its for-profit prison, the McRae Correctional Institution. A string of bad decisions by the warden, however, led to a massive prison riot, followed by a breakout. Criminals surged throughout the countryside, causing havoc across eastern Georgia.
Numerous militias and vigilante gangs rose to meet this threat. The vigilantes of Lyons and Vidalia banded together as the Circle of Death and successfully warded off the convict invasion. The Circle has stuck around as the leaders of the two towns and their surrounding countryside. Their rule is austere and militaristic, but their efforts are generally appreciated by the citizenry.
With the Fraternal American Republic now on their doorstep, the Circle has decided to approach them to try and join the Cordelian League while they still have the chance. After careful consideration, Commander Quade has given them the best offer they’re going to possibly get, but it will demand a test of loyalty. The Circle must attack Swainsboro and crush the GRRC. If they prove themselves worthy, Quade will reward them handsomely—but Quade is not a patient man, nor does he tolerate disappointment.
Georgia Refugee Resettlement Commission
Capital: Swainsboro
Classification: Local Government (Expansionist county government)
The Georgia Refugee Resettlement Commission is a patchwork body born out of the only Georgian county government to survive the war without slipping into overt authoritarianism. Emanuel County took on a responsibility far greater than was expected of it and organized a formidable militia out of the incoming refugee waves from Augusta and Savannah. They conquered several neighboring warlords and gangs, carving out a decent swathe of central Georgia.
Having grown into something far larger than a mere county, the Emanuel County government established the GRRC, which, as its name implies, helped resettle refugees across its territory to better even the burdens of its population. Leadership of the GRRC is linked with that of Emanuel County; while the county still enjoys democratic elections, the rest of the Authority is subject to Swainsboro’s will. Their population has been bolstered in recent years by the exodus of blacks and other racial minorities from hostile factions like the FAR and CSA.
The Commission’s diplomacy with other Georgian factions leaves much to be desired. They cooperate with the neighboring Savannah River Reclamation Authority only out of convenience, as there are still threatening warlords remaining on their borders. Their worst foreign policy failure has been the needless antagonism of the CSS, who would have otherwise been a key ally against the threatening FAR.
The Nukes
Capital: Waynesboro
Classification: Warlord (Raider gang)
Waynesboro, being close to the site of a melted-down nuclear reactor, was almost entirely abandoned during the Starving Time. This very quality does attract a certain kind of person, however, and allowed the ghost town to grow once again as a community of outcasts and degenerates—mostly the raiders and bandits evicted by larger civilized factions.
No such faction has any current interest in capturing Waynesboro or maintaining a military presence in the irradiated city, allowing rogues to use it as a base from which they can raid the rest of the state. This den of thieves has come under the leadership of the pre-eminent gang, the Nukes. Needless to say, however, the life expectancies in Waynesboro are short—not just for people, but the gangs themselves. Waynesboro’s gone through nine different gangs in the past ten years, and the Nukes aren’t likely to buck the the trend of ephemeral leadership.
Savannah River Reclamation Authority
Capital: Sylvania
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Neo-feudal regime)
The Savannah River Reclamation Authority is Georgia’s quintessential neo-feudal regime. The Authority owes its existence to Finlay Kirkham, a prewar postal service worker who was appointed by the short-lived Athens government to help direct refugees from Savannah and Augusta into designated safe zones. When Athens was destroyed, Kirkham’s refugee service devolved into what was essentially an armed gang that controlled who had access to food and shelter. Naturally, Kirkham greatly extended his powers and ambitions and became the effective dictator of the Savannah River region.
From his court in Sylvania, Kirkham established a loose control over a patchwork of local elements—towns, counties, police departments, militias, gangs, churches, the works—on both sides of the Savannah River. His greatest achievement was a victory over the intimidating warlord of Statesboro, an escaped convict from the private prison in McRae-Helena, Georgia. Instead of bequeathing the city to some subordinate, Superintendent Kirkham placed Statesboro under his direct control. He hopes that this decision will set a precedent of consolidation and centralization into a true dictatorial regime. It may be too little and too late, however, to transition out of the aging neo-feudal system before his aggressively expanding neighbors catch up with him.
Index
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Author’s Note: Given the exceptional level of detail our friend Jeff went into by helping me describe these factions, this article will read a little differently from most others I’ve written. Many of the factions discussed here are covered in a similar (though not quite as exhaustive) manner as the United States of Aztlan and the Kingdom of the Ozarks.
Named for the Civil War unit of Arkansan troops led by Georgian-born general William J. Hardee; not to be confused with Hardee’s Hundreds, an Alabaman warlord faction.
Great article! Is Jeff planning on writing a story in Georgia like you are in Oklahoma?