The Fallen Continent: Mississippi
The South's most populous state also harbors some of the country's oldest rivalries.
Population: 640,000
Largest City: Tupelo
A life on the Vicksburg bluff,
A home in the trenches deep;
Where we dodge Yank shells enough,
And our old pea-bread won’t keep.
On old Logan’s beef I dine,
For there’s fat on his bones no more;
Oh! give me some pork and brine,
And truck from the sutler’s store!
Introduction
Although Mississippi was one of the poorest, most underdeveloped states prior to the Great War, these very qualities helped spare it the fate of some of its eastern neighbors. Without large cities or a densely-packed population, there were fewer targets and more survivors. Government forces endured here to an extent seldom seen east of the Mississippi.
The two most prominent surviving cities were the industrial city of Tupelo and the military center of Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg itself wasn’t targeted, but the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center further south was. The base survived the initial nuclear exchange thanks to a successful missile defense. Anticipating a follow-up strike, Camp Shelby evacuated most of its personnel and equipment and dispersed it throughout the state. To their surprise, the Chinese missile sent to destroy the base in a secondary strike turned out to be a dud, and Hattiesburg was miraculously spared.
This afforded the survival of vital military personnel, facilities, equipment, and supply stockpiles. Counted among the surviving personnel were Air Force reservists and Navy Seabees who were undergoing training before their scheduled deployment in the Third World War. Mississippi was already primed for a more successful fate than most other states, but the survival of Camp Shelby greatly improved their fortunes.
For all their military and logistic successes, however, Mississippi couldn’t avert the evil fate brought about by political disunity.
Tupelo and Hattiesburg
Mississippi didn’t have to worry about refugees and population displacement to the extent of other states, but it was still plagued by fallout, disease, starvation, banditry, and political unrest. The state government immediately reconvened in Tupelo under a diarchy between Susan Gantt, a Mississippi Supreme Court justice, and Richard Coaker, the US Representative for Mississippi’s fourth congressional district. Through this arrangement, Gantt helped establish a provisional state government while Coaker assumed responsibility for the remaining federal forces in the state. Additionally, Coaker’s administration drew in federal personnel from surrounding states, many of whom came from Louisiana and were very desperate to escape that sinking ship.
Understanding that the federal government in Twin Falls could not and would not offer them any assistance, the Tupelo government immediately enacted a plan of triage, establishing government enclaves in Hattiesburg, Greenville, and Oxford, as well as smaller refuges in Natchez and Starkville. In course of time, each of these refuges slipped out of Tupelo’s grasp, for varying reasons. In Hattiesburg’s case, it had to do with far-right politics.
Political extremists had gathered serious momentum at both ends of the spectrum just before the Great War, both by fighting in the streets (and even in the bush) and by winning over sympathizers in the institutions. On the eve of the Great War, there was a small, yet vocal bloc of far-right radicals within the Republican Party. Unlike the far-left, which was mostly urban and had much greater difficulty in transferring its momentum to the post-nuclear world, the right was much more rural in character and had a solid support base throughout the American South. After years of progressive Democrat rule, they were eager to rebuild America in a manner that conformed to their political views.
The Regenerated Congress
The short-lived Twin Falls government was Democratic, and while its successor in Amarillo was Republican, Acting President Zinn’s administration chose to downplay political partisanship and marginalize extremism in favor of a kind of “rally round the flag” centrist-conservatism. Moreover, Twin Falls had abandoned the eastern US to its fate, and Amarillo was in even less of a position to offer the South any support. With no one to count on but themselves, the surviving elements of the Republican far-right had to get organize to survive the nuclear winter and see their dreams realized.
The Mississippi Republican Party took the lead. They invoked Article V of the US Constitution and called for a new Constitutional Convention to be held in Tupelo. Only Congress can call for such conventions in the first place, but they invoked the article all the same. The call was answered by delegations from across the nation, mostly concentrated in the South. The lion’s share of the Congress came from Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, but other contributing states included Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, whose delegations possessed varying levels of legitimacy.
Although Tupelo held the intended venue for the congress, the ruling powers had none of it. The Mississippi Supreme Court resented the state legislature for going over their heads, and the neo-conservative Coaker was ardently loyal to Amarillo and refused to host a seditious congress in his territory. The rightists were shut out of Tupelo and had to find somewhere else to assemble. They found their save haven in Hattiesburg, where a collection of military officers and state legislators were happy to receive them.
According to Article V of the United States Constitution, a Constitutional Convention can pass constitutional amendments if three-fourths of the state legislatures vote on them. Three-fourths of states had not sent delegations, nor did all of the delegations even represent actual state legislatures (some were sent by individual counties or non-governmental militias, and Florida’s delegation was a collection of rogue officials with no connection to any faction or authority within Florida itself), but this didn’t stop the so-called New Constitutional Convention from convening and passing sweeping changes. They didn’t just amend the US Constitution—they abolished it and drafted a new one. In doing so, they founded a new federal government, the Regenerated United States of America in Congress Assembled, which historical discourse has shortened to the Regenerated Congress for brevity’s sake. Its name both invokes spiritual regeneration and the patriotic days of the Founding Fathers, and the congress was meant to be a serious challenge to the Amarillo government and the quasi-independent federal administrations in Bozeman, Montana, St. Cloud, Minnesota, and State College, Pennsylvania.
There were heated disagreements over what direction the Regenerated Congress should take, and those disagreements were not settled within the Congress’ lifetime. The New Constitutional Convention attempted to compromise with a confederal model, which would satisfy rightist Southerners’ demands for a weaker federal government while giving individual states the freedom to set policy for themselves. The result was a disjointed confederation whose member states took drastically different courses to satisfy their particular definitions of liberty.
Oklahoma and Arkansas leaned in on Christian Nationalism. Tennessee veered towards paleoconservatism. The militia factions in Texas and Illinois entrenched themselves, while South Carolina’s militia regime experienced a liberalizing thaw. Georgia openly embraced fascism, and the communist revolution in Louisiana helped revive the Ku Klux Klan in reaction. Kentucky’s rightist government in Somerset was crushed by warlords, and any far-right movements that emerged in Florida had nothing to do with the Regenerated Congress in the first place. Meanwhile, the ruling powers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Selma, Alabama drifted back towards the center as establishment politicians tried to distance themselves from the radical militias upon which they had become reliant.
The New Constitutional Convention’s goal was to get the ball rolling so that many different factions all across the nation could lend their support for the Regenerated Congress and facilitate a nation-wide takeover, but the expected support failed to materialize. The rightists out west had taken a much different direction, the midwestern rightists were fighting for their lives against the refugee hordes, and the patriots up northeast were ideologically flaky and lacked the numbers or resources to do much. Hattiesburg raised their hopes after the secondary strike on Amarillo, but instead of leaving them as the sole legitimate claimant, the ensuing Dodge City—Midland War shattered any further ambitions towards national unity, regardless of ideology.
The extent of the Regenerated Congress’ ideology in the first place is debatable. They did not prosecute their quest to the extreme ends seen in the likes of the George Washington Legion or Northwest American Republic. There is generally less room for ideological projects in the post-apocalypse than was commonly hoped for extremists, and most of what the Regenerated Congress did accomplish was informal. Food, shelter, medical care, and other necessities were prioritized based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and political ideology, as they often were in other factions, and this was more commonly done through obtuse vagrancy laws and skill evaluations than any kind of explicit racial policy. Southern Mississippi is a good deal whiter than it was thirty years ago, as its African American population was faced with the choice of either leaving or starving. Policies surrounding education, marriage, birth control, and economics followed a right wing platform in a less subtle manner.
Evidently, it was too much for some, and not enough for others. The breaking point came during the 2036 Presidential Election, when establishment politicians blatantly rigged the election in favor of moderate pragmatist Blaine Richmond. Richmond followed up on the election by immediately launching a purge of extremist elements within the Regenerated Congress. This provoked a civil war within Mississippi, while factions that previously supported the congress from afar suddenly jumped ship and went their own direction. The war progressed to the advantage of the radical Mississippi rebels, who had aligned themselves with the KKK in Louisiana and were fast closing in on Hattiesburg. Fence-sitting Alabama finally intervened and saved Hattiesburg from capture. In doing so, however, they deposed President Richmond and formally dissolved the Regenerated Congress for good.
United States of America (Tupelo)
Capital: Tupelo
Classification: Federal Legacy (Congressman’s government)
State of Mississippi (Tupelo)
Capital: Tupelo
Classification: State Legacy (State government)
Allegiance: United States of America (Tupelo)
The Tupelo administration watched idly for the entire duration of the Regenerated Congress’ existence. Coaker bet it all on a gamble that the whole thing would burn itself out in a few years, and he was correct. He was rather disappointed that Amarillo never rewarded him for his loyalty, however. He was even more upset when it was destroyed in a secondary strike. Loyalty to the federal government had become the basis of Tupelo’s legitimacy, and now they were cast adrift. Coaker tried to maintain the chain of continuity by recognizing the Midland government, but it soon became apparent how incapable and paranoid President Ingersoll really was.
Although Coaker made a name for himself early on as a diligent administrator and faithful servant of the federal government, he became lethargic and disinterested in government affairs when it was up to him to rule alone. He increasingly deferred to the state government and let them handle matters on their own. Chief Justice Gantt, meanwhile, grew worried about the possibility of ambitious underlings launching a coup in Tupelo, using President Ingersoll’s purge-happy paranoia as a justification. She pressured Coaker to finally break with Midland and claim the Presidency for himself. Although he had no interest in ruling, Coaker acquiesced, and used his authority to organize national elections in which he declined to run for re-election. After his term expired, Coaker returned to a subordinate position in the Tupelo government. By the Peter Principle, he was demoted back to his level of competence and actually served in his office with more energy and assertiveness than he had ever demonstrated as President.
The United States of America (Tupelo) is characterized by a weak federal government that possesses only an executive branch—there is no Congress or US Supreme Court, which have been “temporarily” dismissed. The President technically holds immense power, but is checked by a strong Mississippi state government that solely possesses the instruments of actually executing the President’s decrees. In effect, the Tupelo presidency is a mostly ceremonial office whose primary responsibilities are to direct relief agencies and coordinate civilian-military cooperation during wartime (which is most of the time in post-apocalyptic America). All other matters of government, including actual command over the military, is handled by the Mississippi state government, whose Supreme Court remains the most powerful institution in the realm. Under Chief Justice Gantt’s rule, the Supreme Court was an effectively dictatorial body, but the regime has thawed since her death and the court has declined to a mere “first among equals” in the State of Mississippi. The Governor and state legislature aren’t calling the shots all of a sudden, but they are decently effective in their own capacities, which is more than what the President can say.
The USA-Tupelo is an isolated government that lacks any recognition or remote support from other factions, but they are decently powerful and have accrued some good forward momentum. After years as an effective city-state under the Gantt regime, Tupelo has finally begun the long-awaited process of expansion to reclaim the rest of the state.
Tupelo’s relationship with the rest of the country is complicated, and they don’t want to provide a direct answer to the federal question right now. As such, they’ve focused their expansion within Mississippi itself and have tried to avoid provoking neighboring states. They’ve struggled at length with the Tennessee Patriotic Congress to the north and have even achieved a small buffer region (which is administered as a part of Mississippi), but would rather keep themselves out of any northern entanglements. To that end, they’ve propped up the Butcher Bill gang in Germantown as a proxy, further staving off the federal question.
Aside from Butcher Bill, the closest thing they have to an ally is the Alabama Nuclear Recovery Command; despite their complicated history and frequent disagreements, they’ve at least come to a quiet understanding with the Alabama National Guard regime. The ANRC’s position is that, if Tupelo will respect their authority and end their “direct rule from Mississippi” policy, then they’ll open up to recognition and cooperation. Until then, simple non-aggression is the best offer that Tuscaloosa can give them—and that non-aggression does not including stopping Tupelo-bound raiders from crossing state lines every once in a while.
Cornbread Gang
Capital: Senatobia
Classification: Warlord (Local warlord gang)
The Cornbread Gang, like their namesake Cornbread Mafia from 20th Century Kentucky, is a warlord gang who earns their bread and butter through the marijuana trade. Attitudes towards marijuana in postwar America vary greatly; in most Regenerated Congress factions, possession is punishable by forced labor (which conveniently produces a decent pool of cheap laborers). In the Mississippi Delta factions, it’s totally legal and about as common as tobacco and alcohol. In the USA-Tupelo, it’s technically illegal to possess but is seldom enforced, unless the authorities want to make an example out of someone.
The marijuana trade is a little seedy, but it’s not the reason why the Cornbread Gang is the most hated faction in a state that already has the Ku Klux Klan in it. The reason they’ve attracted the ire of the Tupelo government is their extensive use of child soldiers and child labor. Almost all warlords do it, at least a little bit, but in the Cornbread Gang it’s very prevalent and not at all subtle.
Delta Safe Zone
Capital: Clarksdale
Classification: Local Government (Thawed warlord regime)
The Mississippi River Delta area of northwest Mississippi and southwest Arkansas initially experienced a great upheaval following the Great War. South-bound refugees travelled along the river, trying to escape their frigid homes for warmer climes during the nuclear winter. The Delta was already extremely poor before the war, and the refugee crisis and environmental damages to the river were too much for local authorities to handle. Before long, the region fell under the control of a powerful neo-feudal warlord in Greenville, Mississippi, who organized his conquests into the “Federated States of America.”
Further north in Clarksdale, a petty warlord from Memphis, Tennessee conquered the city and established the Delta Safe Zone, a legitimist faction that recruited northern refugees as its primary support base, while still including vestigial elements of the prewar government. The Safe Zone lingered on the edge of FSA suzerainty, periodically drifting in and out of Greenville’s sphere of influence. When the FSA tried to subjugate them into permanent compliance, the Delta called on the Kingdom of the Ozarks to intervene and save them. The Ozarks answered the call and destroyed the FSA.
The Delta Safe Zone was saved from Greenville, at the cost of their full independence. The Ozarks’ price for intervention was to reduce Clarksville to an Ozark client state and buffer region across the Mississippi. It has its upsides, however, and the King leaves the Delta to govern its own affairs, as long as they cooperate with Hot Springs in matters of trade and defense. Speaking of domestic affairs, the newfound stability afforded by the Ozark treaty helped the civilian puppet government gradually turn the tables over its warlord captors. The legitimist regime in Clarksville has thawed into a reborn democratic government, in the manner of its prewar predecessor.
This unique arrangement has placed the Delta in an awkward position, however, as they technically still belong to the State of Mississippi (they don’t recognize any particular successor) and the United States of America (whose successors they also do not recognize), while remaining a client state of a secessionist monarchy. For all intents and purposes, they hold themselves to be an independent city-state who happens to have a “special relationship” with Hot Springs, even if they remain a de jure subject of the USA.
Mississippi River Associated Towns and Counties
Capital: Greenville
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Oligarchic republic)
Further downstream of Clarksdale was Greenville, a cultural center that was designated by Coaker and Gantt’s Tupelo government as their main foothold on the Mississippi River. They trusted Mississippi Highway Patrol major Jim Stover to defend the city throughout the Starving Time. Eventually, so the plan went, the winter would thaw, food stockpiles would be replenished, and the government could break out of the cities, return to the countryside, and restore order to Mississippi: just as President Zinn’s “Amarillo model” instructed.
Unfortunately for Coaker, fate had other plans. The Mississippi Delta collapsed into total anarchy, the Regenerated Congress sowed discord throughout the rest of the state, and another wave of secondary strikes destroyed Amarillo. As Tupelo took on an isolationist aspect and the question of national and even state succession became muddled, Major Stover (now Superintendent Stover) took matters into his own hands. He sallied forth from Greenville and made war on the gangs and warlords on both sides of the Mississippi, forging a powerful warlord regime in his own right. Along the way, he established his own state government to rival Tupelo and Hattiesburg, and eventually proclaimed his own national government: the Federated States of America.
The FSA was theoretically a renewed United States, with a new constitution for a new age. In practice, it was a neo-feudal dictatorship, and the constitution was crafted specifically to allow Stover’s preferred mode of government: collecting heavy tributes in the form of taxes and soldiers from autonomous subordinate governments. Stover’s neo-feudal regime showed promise and was the titan of the Mississippi for many years; it even overshadowed actual rump governments like Tupelo and Hattiesburg. Unfortunately, the FSA was plagued with some longstanding cracks in its foundation that Stover proved unable to mend. He got caught up in a cycle of conquest, forced to conquer more territory to reward to his captains, whom he depended upon to govern conquered territory.
In attempting to centralize his realm and subdue some of his more peripheral vassals, Stover bit off more than he could chew and provoked a war with the Kingdom of the Ozarks. After a series of inconclusive land battles, the Ozarks embarked on a river campaign to bombard Greenville with gunboats. Weeks of bombardment followed, until a lucky shot scored a direct hit on Stover’s bunker and killed him. With FSA leadership in disarray, Ozark Royal Marines stormed the city and captured it before making peace with remaining FSA authorities.
The result was the end of the Federated States of America. All its territory west of the Mississippi was annexed to the Ozarks and its northern salient split off as the Delta Safe Zone. The rump government in Greenville was reorganized as the Mississippi River Associated Towns and Counties, a confederal alliance of local governments and petty warlords that inherited the FSA’s remaining territory. Most neo-feudal regimes utterly fall apart when their paramount warlords die or fall from power, but the MRATC is a special case.
Officially, the MRATC is a county alliance like Little Egypt or Cowboy Country, in which local governments (and rogue Highway Patrol troops, and petty warlords, and militia captains…) collaborate through a central council in the absence of higher state authority. In practice, the MRATC is still a neo-feudal body, but with the Ozark foreign ministry at the top, rather than a paramount dictator. The ruling council is aimless and ineffective, and the constituent towns and counties are often as opposed to each other as they are to external factions. The rump FSA would have collapsed entirely if the Ozarks hadn’t stepped in to prop up their remains as a buffer state. The Ozark ambassador1 doesn’t have any official role in MRATC government, but he’s effectively the most powerful figure in the realm, determining Greenville’s foreign policy on the council’s behalf. Domestic policy is mostly decided at the local level by whatever ruling power may be present.
Some local leaders resent the growing Ozark presence in the Magnolia State, but the Ozarks have managed to keep dissent down by playing the MRATC’s constituent polities off of each other. They don’t have an eye on any eastern annexations just yet; they’ve got affairs in Oklahoma and Missouri to attend to, as well as a brewing crisis over communist Acadia’s control over the Mississippi River trade. But for those living in western Mississippi, it’s hard to tell the difference between the MRATC in Mississippi and the realm of the Marcher Lords across the river.
Republic of Columbia
Capital: Philadelphia
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Martial dictatorship)
Legitimist warlords tend to employ one of two kinds of mechanisms when applying military force to rule their fiefdom. The first is to simply be at the head of an army that forms the primary instrument of authority and command others to rule on your behalf. The second is to rule as a civilian dictator who keeps an army at his beck and call. The Republic of Columbia is a unique exception: a warlord state that is officially a military dictatorship.
At the head of Columbia is its Dictator-for-Life, Edward C. Guest, a retired US Marine with far-right sympathies. He and his “Männerbund” of veterans and volunteers quickly captured the city of Philadelphia shortly into the Starving Time. Guest had high hopes for the Regenerated Congress, with lofty ambitions of rising up its political ranks and restoring order to the country. When the Regenerated Congress fell apart, Guest did not side with any Regenerated Congress successor and instead took the warlord route. He declared the United States of America to be a dead nation and proclaimed the Republic of Columbia, a unitary republic that claims the entirety of the Union’s old territory. Guest even drafted a fairly robust constitution that gave him legal powers to rule the country as a military dictator.
Guest was a student of history before his military career began, and considers himself to be a modern-day Julius Caesar who will lead the broken American republic into a prosperous future by placing the country under imperial military rule. It is quite humorous, then, that his greatest rival for many years was the “Empire of Carthage,” a semi-legitimist warlord state in the nearby city of Carthage, Mississippi. The Republic of Columbia has since expanded throughout central Mississippi and earned its role as a minor power player in the state. Crucially, it forms a strategic buffer between the USA-Tupelo and the American Empire and has leveraged this position to its advantage.
Guest has more than his share of political idiosyncrasies. He blends paleoconservatism with monarchism, fascism, and—above all else—plain warlordism. Some of his unique stances include a blanket ban on any technology developed after 1969, state-enforced Holocaust denial (with a curious lack of other antisemitic policies to accompany it), and a “Council of Responsible Negroes” that governs his black subjects and directs them to work as sharecroppers on state-owned property. Earlier in his career, it might have been apt to describe him as a far-right warlord, but he’s admittedly cooled down on these issues as the years go by. Spurred on by his Caesarian delusions, Guest has increasingly leaned into his own cult of personality as the ideological crux of his regime. On public holidays, he even dresses in Roman imperial garb, with a purple toga and golden wreath.
There is a very limited democratic process in Columbia, however, as the Republic does have an elected senate. Their actual job is just to serve as an advisory body, however. Most policy is decided by dictatorial decree, but the Dictator-for-Life likes to demonstrate his benevolence by leaving certain important decisions up for referendum. On these rare occasions, Columbian citizens (Free whites and “responsible negroes” who own land and have a record of military service) can cast their vote to approve or reject Guest’s proposals. There has only been one occasion on which a referendum failed (a land reform power-grab suggested by Guest’s second-in-command); to everyone’s surprise, Guest did actually honor the result of the referendum and did not pass the law.
Creole Republic
Capital: Natchez
Classification: Local Government (Local secessionist republic)
Most of the Creole Republic’s territory and population is located in Louisiana, but its capital and largest city is located in Mississippi. Natchez was originally designated as a government refuge by Tupelo, tasked with the unenviable duty of managing the flood of refugees traversing up and down the Mississippi River. They had more than their share of both: northern refugees trying to float south for warmer climes during the Starving Time, and Louisianans escaping the madness of genocidal Acadia. The refugee crisis was so extreme that the agency established to handle it—the Mississippi Refugee Resettlement Agency—became the most powerful institution in the area. They held the food stocks, ran the camps, directed the local police and even military, and could control how the refugees lived and where they worked. With so many refugees coming in, the MRRA soon had jurisdiction over most of the area’s population, and they quickly overshadowed the local government in terms of importance. By the end of the Starving Time, it was operating entirely on its own with no oversight from or loyalty towards Tupelo, Hattiesburg, or any other government in Mississippi or elsewhere.
The MRRA expanded past the river and into Louisiana itself, governing far more than just Natchez. This wider area became the Mississippi Refugee Resettlement Zone and was the preferred destination for blacks escaping Paul Blanchard’s genocide of African Americans (among many other people groups) in southern Louisiana. With so many destabilizing refugees and so much power in the hands of a single organization, it’s a wonder the Zone didn’t fall to warlordism. Perhaps it is because the blacks who were able to survive Blanchard’s purges had to get politically organized to make it this far. At any rate, the northbound refugees meshed surprisingly well with the fabric of the Zone and contributed greatly to its political institutions. Together, they transformed the Zone into the Creole Republic, a secessionist state by and for African Americans.
The Creole Republic has its share of problems, including an entrenched political elite that holds a bias for light-skinned blacks and mulattoes at the expense of darker ones. Nevertheless, they’ve fared well compared to many of their neighbors, and are the last, best hope for Louisiana’s deeply scarred black population. Their control over this last stretch of the Mississippi before its divergence into the Lower Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers gives them an immense strategic importance that’s attracted the eye of other powers. First among these is the Kingdom of the Ozarks, with whom they have signed several border and trade treaties, as well as a defensive pact against potential Acadian aggression (which is admittedly an unlikely prospect). Future Ozark plans for a Hot Springs-led Mississippian trade bloc include the Creoles as vital partners.
Imperial State of Mississippi
Capital: McComb
Classification: Right-Wing Ideological Faction (Klan state)
Allegiance: American Empire
While the government tried to maintain order from its enclaves of authority, militias and warlords stepped in to fill the gaps all across the state. Southwest Mississippi fell under the control of the powerful Citizens Constitutional Militia of Mississippi, which was itself an alliance of smaller militias that answered to a central captain in McComb. Their influence was initially restricted to the southern end of I-55, but they grew in strength over the course of the Starving Time by aligning themselves with the Regenerated Congress in Hattiesburg and the Florida Parishes of Louisiana.
After the Acadian Revolution rocked Louisiana, it sent shockwaves that reverberated in Mississippi. The Florida Parishes became their own Louisiana state government and embraced the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The hitherto disparate and decrepit remnants of the Klan were reunified by the Louisiana-based Bayou Knights, who reestablished themselves as the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan. The revived Klan expanded into Mississippi and attracted members of the CCMM. Many CCMM fighters had dual membership with the Militia and the Klan, blurring the lines between the two organizations. This arrangement grew complicated as the Klan authorities in Louisiana gave orders that conflicted with those of the State of Mississippi in Hattiesburg. As the Klan was initially loyal to the Regenerated Congress, the federal government could have amended these squabbles, but its decentralized nature prevented serious action.
When Jeffrey D. Mouton, the Grand Imperial Wizard and Governor of Louisiana-Bogalusa, ran for president, he was kept out of office by President Blaine Richmond’s rigged elections. The Regenerated Congress was immediately torn apart by civil war, with political moderates siding with the establishment in Hattiesburg and extremists flocking to the CCMM and the Invisible Empire. Before long, Mouton proclaimed the American Empire, formally absorbing the CCMM into the Klan and uniting the other sympathetic extremists of Mississippi. To compliment the Imperial State of Louisiana in Bogalusa, the Mississippi Klan established the Imperial State of Mississippi. Like in Louisiana, the state governor is also the Grand Dragon of the state Klan.
Life in Imperial Mississippi is not unlike life in Imperial Louisiana, which includes the American Empire’s unique quirk of a civic law system, as opposed to the traditional American method of common law. Things are a little more roughshod here than they are down south, as Louisiana-Bogalusa enjoyed a more secure position from the start and remained on better terms with local antebellum authorities. Imperial Mississippi, by contrast, was more anarchic and its frontiers remain contested and unstable. The “Invisible Empire” elements of the Klan (that is to say, the Klan’s paramilitary structure) have a greater sway here than the “Visible Empire,” which is the American Empire’s civilian government.
State of Mississippi (Hattiesburg)
Capital: Hattiesburg
Classification: State Legacy (Thawed rightist state government)
Allegiance: State of Alabama (Selma), Congress of Southern States
President Richmond was in trouble, following the rigged elections of 2036. He and his powerbase of establishment moderates had grown increasingly worried about the train they had hitched themselves to and wanted a way out. Richmond had thought that he could simply shut them out of higher office and send a message that the people simply weren’t interested in ideological extremism. He was wrong.
The Hattiesburg government was well-prepared to withstand external onslaughts. They had the bastion of Camp Shelby, with handsome stockpiles of military equipment and experienced personnel to use it. They had already used their might to crush a few upstart warlords during the Starving Time. But Camp Shelby wasn’t in the same state as it was before the Great War. Much of its equipment and personnel were dispersed early on throughout Mississippi and into other states, at the request of Twin Falls and Tupelo before the Regenerated Congress was founded. What remained was a comparative skeleton’s crew; it was formidable enough to crush outsiders when the Regenerated Congress could form a united front, but the National Guard was now too small in number to defend Hattiesburg from an internal threat.
After years of grueling warfare and defections by disillusioned guardsmen to the rebels and various warlords, Hattiesburg was on the brink of defeat. While his powerbase clamored for a solution, Blaine Richmond was stalling. With no other options, his supporters went above his head and asked the neutral Alabaman government in Selma to intervene. Selma acquiesced, sending thousands of National Guardsmen and militiamen across the border to blunt the American Empire’s advance. A ceasefire with the Klan was signed, but Alabama’s price was Richmond’s administration. Alabama, whose political establishment was even more moderate and entrenched than Richmond’s Mississippians, deposed Richmond and purged the Hattiesburg government.2 The new State of Mississippi was a politically-neutered client state of Alabama, bound to them by a humiliating treaty and an Alabaman garrison across state lines.
Since they were shackled to Alabama-Selma, Mississippi-Hattiesburg has been drawn into another organization against their will: the Congress of Southern States. The CSS is similar to the New American Alliance or even the Regenerated Congress of old, in that it is not a single faction but rather a confederation of multiple constituent factions. It exists in two main “pockets”: the core in northern Georgia and western South Carolina, and the western pocket in Alabama and Mississippi. The CSS is also like the NAA in that it incorporates several politically disparate factions with very different modes of government. Alabama and Mississippi are rump state governments, Georgia is a thawed military government, South Carolina is a thawed militia regime, and Florida and South Carolina are legitimist warlords descended from elements of their respective prewar state governments.
Officially, the Congress of Southern States is a body that exists above the state level to coordinate inter-state cooperation in the absence of a federal government. It does not claim national succession, nor does it recognize any national successor. It is also not an attempt to revive the Confederate States of America, but some people within the CSS (and some opponents of the CSS in other factions) treat it as such. The politics of its member factions are generally characterized by the dominance of a center-right to right-wing establishment, heavy influence of the military and militias in domestic government, and an emphasis on state-level cultural identification, to the detriment of the American identity.
The Congress meets regularly in Gainesville, Georgia, its unofficial capital, although it would be wrong to call Georgia the leader of the CSS. Together, Georgia and South Carolina are “the Big Two,” and Alabama is sometimes included with them as “the Big Three,” the main ringleaders of the CSS. As of right now, the CSS has little ability to affect domestic policy, but there are plans to gradually centralize the alliance into a proper federal faction, should they ever attain a secure enough position to do so. Its primary purpose so far is to coordinate trade and warfare and to exchange technology. Their immediate goal right now is to crush the powerful Fraternal American Republic, which is challenging them for dominance over the Deep South. All the CSS’ other ambitions and aspirations have to be put on hold for now, because there is an existential struggle currently in progress. For the foreseeable future, this leaves the Hattiesburg government as a neglected buffer state on the CSS’ far western frontier.
Newton Safe Zone
Capital: Newton
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Rogue localist regime)
Newton County originally hoped to ride out the apocalypse in isolation, until an ambitious county official overthrew the government on behalf of the Regenerated Congress in its early days. He never paid anything more than lip service to Hattiesburg, and didn’t even support them for ideological reasons—Newton’s ruler was simply a localist who didn’t want to have to give up any food or supplies to Tupelo, and siding Hattiesburg looked like a good justification to break with them. It certainly helped that the decentralized Regenerated Congress wasn’t going to make any demands of them.
When the Regenerated Congress fell apart, Newton County tried to ride the line and stay out of the fighting. The isolationism was hard on the county; there was a power struggle, resulting in the Commissioner’s deposition and the establishment of the Newton Safe Zone. The Safe Zone abandoned the old county seat of Decatur and relocated to the city of Newton itself. Despite the “Safe Zone” moniker, Newton County was not interested in receiving any refugees, and its population continued to shrink throughout the Mississippi civil war. Since the fall of Richmond’s government and the rise of the CSS, Newton has made a rebound through détente with Hattiesburg and Selma. Their goal is to reach some kind of deal with the CSS, in the hopes that Selma will invest in them as a forward outpost against Columbia and the Klan.
Osiris
Capital: Scooba
Classification: Right-Wing Ideological Faction (Black nationalist warlord)
In contrast to the more uplifting example presented by the likes of the Creole Republic or the USA-Gadsden is Osiris, a radical black nationalist warlord who has carved out a small corner of Mississippi for himself. As one might infer from his adoptive name, Osiris has some rather peculiar views regarding the history of his race. He is a fervent proponent of the Black Egypt pseudohistorical theory and holds various esoteric beliefs concerning the cosmic significance of the African race. Among these is his belief that Jews and whites are inferior devil races; he can barely abide whites and executes Jews on sight. He is not a Nation of Islam member, nor is he a Black Israelite, but there are a few of both within the ranks of his fighters. Osiris does not literally believe himself to be some kind of successor or incarnation of the Egyptian god, but he does use the name as part of his cult of personality.
Osiris wouldn’t have gotten far on his own, but the Acadian Revolution and its fallout stoked racial tensions to a degree not seen in most other states; this produced a cohort of radical, racially-conscious black men of the sort that would find Osiris’ movement attractive. Despite any ideological goals they might hold, however, Osiris and his followers are no better than any other warlord band. They raid and plunder like other warlords, just with a racial lens through which they decide on their targets. Given their already bellicose nature, those targets include every single faction within raiding distance—including the racially-inclusive leftists in the Department of Public Safety.
Department of Public Safety
Capital: Starkville
Classification: Left-Wing Ideological Faction (Student revolt state)
While the more prestigious university of Ole Miss in Oxford remained securely under the control of the Tupelo government, Starkville and its Mississippi State University received minimal investment from state authorities. The local government (and the campus itself) had a hard time managing black bloc student protestors early on in the Starving Time, and that problem only got worse as far-right movements began to pop up across Mississippi, further radicalizing the small leftist presence in the state’s college towns. Tupelo had a strong enough hold over Oxford to quash unrest there, but Starkville was too weak and isolated to overcome the increasingly organized students, who created the Department of Public Safety as a uniting paramilitary structure.
Since its rises to power, the DPS has implemented a form of socialism that essentially amounts to authoritarian militia rule with a touch of “equitable” social and economic reforms. Even these are mostly concessions meant to keep up morale, as the DPS is very pragmatic as left-wing regimes go. They’re essentially the leftist equivalent to pragmatic militia regimes like the California Republic or the Texas Militia. The DPS had its share of fire-eaters in the early days, but the flame burned out quickly as the harsh reality of the apocalypse sank in. Still, conditions here are better than in some other leftist factions, like genocidal Acadia or the bleak Shenandoah Valley. And for most of its black population, it’s preferable to life under Guest’s Columbia or Mouton’s Klan.
Index
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Said ambassador is the Earl of Mississippi, a vassal of the Duke of Jonesboro. Since he spends most of the year at the embassy in Greenville, the Earl has left his son, the Viscount, back in Osceola to attend to domestic affairs.
“Purges” is too strong of a word. The Selma Government of Alabama sacked most of the Hattiesburg Government and selectively pardoned its most competent and cooperative members, bringing them back on board for the new administration. A select few bad offenders were punished to set an example, and only one man was executed: the despotic Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, who was effectively a legitimist warlord right under Hattiesburg’s nose. Blaine Richmond himself was detained and held for two years without trial, before he was released and allowed to escape. He subsequently moved to the American Quarter of Kimberly, the capital of the Afrikaner Volkstaat, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Well, now I'm up to date! It has been great reading this, you have an uncommon but informed perspective and it's incredible to see the depth each individual state has.
I was thinking of making a fan-article on how board games would be like in Fallen Continent, would you like me to guest post here for It?