The Fallen Continent: Tennessee

The Volunteer state is torn between legacy governments bent on preserving continuity and postwar secessionists who strive to lead the state to a new future.

Dec 22, 2024

Population: 430,000
Largest City: Columbia

With daughters fair, and sons so brave,
To do and dare, their deeds they gave
Courageously, without a fear,
And won the name of Volunteer.

Introduction

Tennessee initially seemed to fare well once the dust of the initial nuclear exchange had settled (proverbially speaking, as the dust was very much still in the air and would remain there for several years). Several large cities survived mostly intact, including Murfreesboro and Knoxville. Even the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee made it out alive and established a rump government in Murfreesboro. Under his leadership, the rump government dispersed its remaining resources in key centers around Knoxville, Columbia, and Jackson, having formulated a plan for the government to hold onto these islands of authority before reclaiming the rest of the state once the nuclear winter subsided.

Unfortunately for the Lieutenant Governor, this plan was not meant to be. A pair of secondary strikes annihilated Knoxville and Murfreesboro four months later, and both Columbia and Jackson set a very different course for the future of Tennessee.

Tennessee Patriotic Congress

Capital: Jackson
Classification: Right-Wing Ideological Faction (Far-right state government)

There was a brief period, less than a month long, after the first federal rump government in Twin Falls was destroyed yet before the secondary strike on Murfreesboro. At this time, the federal remnants in Amarillo, Texas were scrambling to put together a second post-nuclear government to guide the country during its darkest hour. Emboldened by the perceived illegitimacy of the Amarillo government and its inability to project power across the Mississippi, far-right politicians from across the country came together to form a rightist alternative. Their intended destination was Tupelo, Mississippi, but loyal federal remnants there shut them out. Disaffected state officials located further south in Hattiesburg were more receptive, however, and hosted the Regenerated United States of America in Congress Assembled, the first serious attempt to challenge the federal government after the Great War.

After Mississippi itself, the highest-profile member of the Regenerated Congress was the Tennessean delegation. This delegation was made up of far-right officials from the government remnants in Jackson, Tennessee. While the Murfreesboro government still existed at that time and Jackson nominally recognized their authority, they formed a right-wing legislative body without government approval, known as the Tennessee Patriotic Congress. Murfreesboro immediately denounced them and cut them off, but was in no position to shut the Congress down. The TPC waited until after Murfreesboro was destroyed to officially proclaim a rival state government. By that time, the only other notable state remnants in Tennessee were the emergency management agencies in Columbia, who were openly hostile to Jackson by that point.

The TPC quickly abandoned Murfreesboro’s plan to maintain government authority from four separate urban islands and spring out once the nuclear winter thawed. Instead, they shifted their focus on preserving whatever they could west of the Tennessee River and abandoning the rest of the state. This cost them any support from eastern Tennesseans, but helped them maintain a strong presence in their western core.

Much of the TPC’s early years were spent battling the Tupelo government of Mississippi (which later became the USA-Tupelo) in the hopes of linking up with Hattiesburg and creating a large, contiguous cradle for the pan-rightist alliance. Although the Tennesseans gave a good account of themselves in battle, their hopes were dashed when the Regenerated Congress collapsed from infighting between the more moderate establishment politicians and the more extremist newcomers. The TPC made peace with Tupelo and took a more moderate and inward-focused stance in the years afterward. “Moderation” is a relative term; they’re tame compared to other Regenerated Congress successor states (such as the American Empire or Evangelical American Republic), but remained resolute enough to alienate much of the state. Still, the TPC is arguably the most democratic faction in the state, and is the only one that regularly holds elections for statewide offices and legislative seats (although some of the TPC’s constituent counties are tightly controlled by militias, sheriffs, and political machines).

The TPC would make a good candidate for membership in the Congress of Southern States, but they refuse to join on principle—the CSS readily took in the traitorous remnants of Hattiesburg, after all. Further confounding matters is the CSS’ favorable relations towards the secessionist states of Franklin and East Tennessee. Instead, they’ve found a friend in the Kingdom of the Ozarks, whom they’ve cozied up to as a vital trade partner. Together with Little Egypt, the Creole Republic, and the Mississippi River Associated Towns and Counties, there are plans in the works to unite the factions into a single Mississippi River trade bloc. Should such a project be realized, it might grant them the power to take on the Acadians and gain access to the Gulf of Mexico.

Butcher Bill

Capital: Germantown
Classification: Warlord (Personalistic warlord gang)

Butcher Bill is the boss of his eponymous gang, who have plundered and slaughtered their way into becoming masters of the habitable lands just east of the Memphis NEZ. Bill’s gang used to be relegated to the NEZ itself and sustained themselves through river piracy, until the war between the Tennessee Patriotic Congress and the USA-Tupelo gave them an opportunity to migrate into safer climes. It was a good thing, too, because the rise of the Ozarks has made river piracy a much less viable option in recent years.

For several years after the migration, Butcher Bill used his proximity to the two powers to play them off of each other. Nowadays, it’s widely known that he’s unofficially allied with Tupelo, who’s propped them up as a proxy against the TPC. In exchange for their aid, Bill and his followers have abandoned cannibalism, which they used to practice as an intimidation tactic.

Mighty Lloyd

Capital: Union City
Classification: Warlord (Personalistic warlord gang)

In northwestern Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky, situated in an area between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers now known as “the Cauldron,” is Mighty Lloyd and his warlord gang. As far as personalistic warlord gangs go, Mighty Lloyd’s is one of the strongest in the nation. Lloyd Jenkins himself was once a child soldier belonging to a now-defunct gang called the “Cancer Garden,” which dwelt within the greater St. Louis NEZ further up the Mississippi River. As a teenager, Lloyd formed a clique of rebellious child soldiers within the gang and deserted the Cancer Garden. The boys seized a river barge and floated downstream, causing mayhem along the Mississippi River until they settled into the Cauldron.

There’s a delicate balance of power here in the Cauldron, as its three resident factions are all about equally matched and lack a decisive edge to settle the ongoing conflict. Mighty Lloyd’s regime lacks the fanaticism of the True Disciples of Christ or the continuity of the Paris government, but Lloyd has a few advantages nonetheless. He enjoys a strong cult of personality and is trending in the direction of legitimism, now that he’s established a council of local leaders to advise his rule. Although the Ozarks as a whole don’t support Lloyd, he has friends among the Marcher lords in the Missouri Bootheel who do business with him and keep him supplied. The Cauldron’s balance is such that, were the TPC to march north and attack one of the factions, the other two could gang up and beat them back. It’ll take a larger development, like a freak accident victory from one of the Cauldron factions, an Ozark-led Mississippi River alliance, or continued expansion of the Second American Republic to upset the balance and bring stability to the region.

State of Tennessee (Paris)

Capital: Paris
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Rogue county government)

Paris, Tennessee is home to more than just a novelty Eiffel Tower replica. As the seat of Henry County, it is host to a pretender regime styling itself the State of Tennessee. It began with an ambitious county official, who refused to recognize the Jackson government and founded his own rival regime. He held rigged gubernatorial elections to add a veneer of democratic legitimacy, and the regime continues to hold elections at irregular intervals with dismally low turnout rates to this day.

The Paris government is the third and final faction in the Cauldron region of southwest Kentucky and northwest Tennessee, and is the only one entirely confined to the Volunteer state. Like their rivals in Union City and Benton, Paris lacks the strength to break out of the stalemate and conquer the rest of the Cauldron, and is searching for allies to give them an edge. Their solipsistic claims over the rest of Tennessee have estranged them from other factions in the state, forcing them to look elsewhere. They’ve tried the Congress of Southern States, but the CSS isn’t interested in hosting them and is better disposed towards Franklin and East Tennessee. With no other options, Paris has actually swallowed its pride and made overtures towards the Second American Republic, in the hopes that the First Citizen will give them a good deal and place them in charge of the rival state government in Livingston. That’s certainly wishful thinking, but the SAR is starting to bog down in Tennessee and could use the help.

State of Franklin

Capital: Columbia
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Reformist warlord)

Columbia, the home town of President James K. Polk, is one of Tennessee’s more unique cities, and it now serves as the capital of Tennessee’s largest faction for a reason. Although it was small enough to avoid the nuclear exchange, Columbia possessed a few key boons that helped ensure its survival in the face of nuclear winter. The city holds itself to be the mule capital of the world, and while it’s week-long mule festival had wrapped up for nearly four months on the eve of the Great War, there were still plenty of mules in town, giving the city a good supply of draft animals and meat. The Duck River, unspoiled by the Great War, also possessed an especially rich bounty of food; unfortunately, the stresses of the starving time depleted the river of many of its unique species of fish and mussels, and it is not as biodiverse as it once was.

Other nearby resources included the extensive heavy industry north of the city, and the large population of Mennonites in Lawrenceburg. The heavy industry was mostly geared towards steel and automobile production, but was quickly retooled for more immediately-pressing needs. The Mennonites, meanwhile, lent their agricultural expertise to the ruling authorities and helped train up a new generation of farmers. Taking all these factors into consideration, the federal government in Twin Falls designated Columbia as the state’s principal Reconstruction and Recovery Center, and the state government in Murfreesboro diverted many of their remaining resources and personnel there. If the rule of law was to survive anywhere in Tennessee, it would be in Columbia.

The rump government was mostly concentrated in Murfreesboro and the National Guard moved its headquarters to Knoxville, making both cities targets for secondary strikes. By the dawn of 2030, the largest cities left were were Jackson, with its far-right ideologues, and Columbia, which had come under the control of emergency management authorities from FEMA and the locally-based TEMA. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency refused to cooperate with the rightists in Jackson and ignored their requests to share food stocks. Early attempts by the Tennessee Patriotic Congress to requisition Columbia’s stockpiles by force were beaten back by TEMA troopers and their hastily-raised conscripts; a brushfire war of raids and skirmishes broke out after that, but neither side had the will or the means to stage a full-scale invasion across the Tennessee River. Moreover, both factions had greater threats looming over them. The TPC, for its part, had Tupelo and the Hattiesburg traitors to contend with. TEMA, meanwhile, should have paid more attention to its eastern flank.

The Distillery-State

Forty miles southeast of Columbia is Lynchburg, Tennessee, a city-county with less than ten thousand inhabitants and only one traffic light. It sat uncomfortably close to an exclusion zone centered around the Arnolds Air Force Base, whose fallout had even enveloped nearby Tullahoma and Manchester. The refugees from these cities and the loot they brought with them bolstered the city’s population by a little, but it was hardly enough to put it on the map. The city would have fallen into obscurity as a hangout for misfits and outcasts at the edge of the habitable world, were it not for one critical installation: the Jack Daniel’s whiskey distillery.

Able to supply the starving and discontented public with one of the post-apocalyptic world’s only universally-desirable commodities, the distillery became a vital fixture of the Tennessee wasteland. The young Jay McKinley, Master Distiller of Jack Daniel’s, didn’t want to lose his source of fortune and security to greedy warlords, so he went on the offensive as a warlord himself. McKinley recruited fighters with whiskey, and conquered a large swathe of southern Tennessee for himself. Even during the Starving Time, he diverted considerable food resources to the distillery to keep churning out whiskey of a quality comparable to that of pre-war brews—it was the only thing he could do to maintain his power and his life. Even when people starved, he had to keep the whiskey flowing.

McKinley’s mercenary army swelled in size and soon found itself on the TEMA frontier. The Columbia regime, meanwhile, was suffering from infighting between FEMA and TEMA leadership, and was disliked by the local population for its heavy-handed rule and austere rationing policies. The Jack Daniel’s regime wasn’t much better, but its approach was straightforward and could at least pour plentiful amounts of whiskey on its problems. McKinley’s big break came when he recruited a smaller gang from the Nashville NEZ to break out of the Zone and attack Franklin, pinning down TEMA forces while he made his big push west.

After his great victory over the management agencies, McKinley set about legitimizing his regime and building a more permanent and meaningful order to consolidate his conquests. Moving past the “whiskey distillery with a state” approach, McKinley looked to Tennessee’s past for ideas. He found inspiration in the 18th century’s proposed “State of Franklin” (which was in eastern Tennessee, rather than middle Tennessee) and proclaimed the State of Franklin, the supposed 51st state of the USA, with its capital in Columbia. McKinley considered making Franklin the state’s ceremonial capital, but the city was too small and too close to the NEZ for comfort—not to mention the fact that it was now ruled by a neo-feudal vassal gang.

The State of Franklin is still in the process of shedding its neo-feudal trappings, gradually establishing a real modern government, enacting uniform laws to govern all of its counties equally, and holding irregular elections for statewide offices. The state is no longer literally governed by a whiskey distillery, but Jack Daniel’s has been enshrined as an important state institution and a key source of revenue. A state currency, in fact, exists in the form of whiskey-backed paper bills that are redeemable in alcohol.

Franklin’s reformist transition is idiosyncratic and unwieldy, but it does have a few defining ideological principles. These generally revolve around an anticipated return to “Jacksonian democracy,” in the manner of the populist Old South and Tennessee in particular. The tenets of Franklin’s Jacksonianism include a strong, empowered executive (realized in the person of Master Distiller McKinley), political patronage for his allies (in an attempt to transition out of outright neo-feudalism and give these people something better to do), a deeply-held disdain for government bureaucracy (in opposition for the old TEMA regime), and economic populism. The latter principle is the most conflicted, as laissez-faire economics stand in contrast with the state-run whiskey enterprise, but McKinley’s opposition to banking and fiat currency have reconciled it.

The State of Franklin holds itself to be the predominant power in Tennessee and the star that the smaller factions orbit around. They enjoy friendly relations with the Tennessee Counties Alliance and the Cumberland County Army, even though they differ in their views on the rightful fate of the old Volunteer State. Their closest friends are in the State of East Tennessee, another Tennessee divisionist faction who issued their own declaration of secession years ago. Together, these four factions present a united front against the Second American Republic. This bloc, called the Cookeville Pact after the city in which its founding treaty was signed, has so far stopped the casted-based Kentuckian regime in its tracks.

Although the SAR’s Tennessean front is locked in stalemate, it still has some forward momentum left in southeast Kentucky, which it can use to drive a wedge between the Cookeville Pact and their northeastern allies of convenience. The Pact is attempting to draw more powers into their alliance to stop the SAR, but have unfortunately found few willing partners. The Kentucky Light Foot Militia is more involved in the midwestern militia sphere, and the small Kentuckian warlords are too fractious and uncooperative. The small Mountain Republic in Norton, Virginia is on board, but the Virginia Emergency Management Agency with which they are associated isn’t. The most important faction they are trying to get on board, the Appalachian Free State, is in a solipsistic and expansionist mood and is not interested in cooperation with other large factions.

The State of Franklin’s last hope for inter-factional cooperation outside of Tennessee, then, is the Congress of Southern States. The CSS isn’t a faction in the strictest sense of the term, but is like the New American Alliance, in that it is a confederation of various factions working together under a loose central authority. They’ve displayed interest in both Franklin and East Tennessee and are willing to admit them as members of the Congress, though they aren’t in much of a position to offer the Tennesseans any direct aid against the Kentuckians. Should both the Tennessee divisionists and the CSS survive their current trials, however, it could lay the foundation for a powerful partnership that will define the face of the American south.

State of Tennessee (Livingston)

Capital: Livingston
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Neo-feudal vassal state)
Allegiance: Second American Republic

After the loss of Nashville and its environs, there was not much left of northern Tennessee. The small towns north of the Cumberland River experienced a brief population surge thanks to refugees, but most refugees were south-bound, not north-bound, and most of those who went north kept going towards Kentucky. The refugees who stayed in northern Tennessee brought nothing to the region except for gang rule, and most of them perished during the Starving Time. Only Livingston, under the rule of a despotic law enforcement gang, stayed large enough to remain on the map.

This sparsely-populated region gradually fell under the control of the Second American Republic, a legitimist warlord state based in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They sent settlers in to repopulate the region, as well as troops to establish government control. When the police regime in Livingston refused their ultimatum to submit to Bowling Green, the SAR attacked the city and annexed it. They subsequently chartered a new State of Tennessee there, the third member state of the SAR. Like the SAR’s other two states, the Livingston government is ineffectual and powerless, and really only serves as a legal fiction to justify the SAR’s territorial ambitions towards the rest of Tennessee.

Tennessee-Livingston is only a thin strip of land south of the Tennessee border and has only one real population center. While the SAR proper in Kentucky is known for its rigid caste system, SAR Tennessee is a chaotic frontier region under military occupation. The only check on the army’s power here is the influence of elite Alpha and Bravo rank transplants from Kentucky, who want to get in early on the Tennessean conquests and distance themselves from Bowling Green’s watchful eye.

Tennessee Counties Alliance

Capital: Cookeville
Classification: Local Government (County alliance)

There isn’t much that can be said about the Tennessee Counties Alliance that hasn’t already been said of other county alliance factions. As its name suggests, several counties in central Tennessee joined forces to ensure their continued survival in the absence of state government. They would have proclaimed a state government for themselves, but their own uncertainty over the TPC’s legitimacy and the unsubtle cynicism of Tennessee-Paris put them off on doing so.

Each of the TCA’s member counties has remained under a perpetual state of emergency since the Great War, although they aren’t quite far gone as to be considered legitimist warlords. The alliance used to be much looser and more confederal in the past, but the threat of the SAR in recent years, as well as the example of their friendly rivals in the State of Franklin, have compelled the TCA to implement a stronger central government in Cookeville.

The TCA is one of the founding members of the Cookeville Pact and is committed to ensuring the Pact’s victory over the SAR. Despite their willing military cooperation with Franklin and East Tennessee, they are also skeptical over the Pact’s future, should they defeat the SAR. Franklin and East Tennessee are secessionists, while the TCA still holds itself to be a part of Tennessee, and regards its partners simply as fellow Tennessee county governments who happen to have funny names and assertive attitudes. What will become of the Pact and its members in the long term is hard to say.

Cumberland County Army

Capital: Crossville
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Law enforcement regime)

The Cumberland County Army is the runt of the Cookeville Pact, and its only proper warlord. Its government situation is bog-standard, as petty legitimist warlords go; the original emergency government was overthrown by an ambitious police officer and the militia he organized. That militia has steadily grown into a vigilante “county army” and is decently effective for its size. The CCA is blatantly dictatorial, but at least provides some solid rule of law and is sufficiently modest in its aims and ambitions that they have earned the respect of neighboring powers. Tensions are a little tense between them and the TCA, as Cookeville would really like them to dissolve the dictatorship and join their Alliance, but Cumberland has Franklin and East Tennessee to back them up.

State of East Tennessee

Capital: Morristown
Classification: Local Government (Local secessionist government)

After the secondary strike on Knoxville, Morristown was left as the largest remaining city in east Tennessee. Among their share of refugees, they also received some of the surviving military personnel of the Tennessee National Guard that was gathering around Knoxville before it fell. Hamblen County actually recognized the Jackson government as soon as Murfreesboro fell and was willing to cooperate with them as their liaison in east Tennessee, until the collapse of the Regenerated Congress.

Hamblen County, whose sympathies lay more with the establishment center-right of Hattiesburg than the extremists in Jackson, Bogalusa, and New Tulsa, broke with the Tennessee Patriotic Congress and seceded from Tennessee as the State of East Tennessee. Since then, they’ve steadily expanded throughout the northeastern corner of the state, incorporating surviving cities and counties and crushing petty warlords. As can be expected of them, given their attitude towards the Regenerated Congress, East Tennessee has a characteristic right-wing bent that stops just short of classifying them as a right-wing ideological faction. Politically, they are the most or second-most democratic faction in the state, depending on how one views the TPC’s electoral process. They do not hold regular elections, but do allow the populace to approve or reject government appointments through plebiscites.

Smokey Mountain Gang

Capital: Gatlinburg
Classification: Warlord (Criminal gang)

The city of Gatlinburg had accrued some notoriety across the country in the days before the Great War as one of America’s premiere tourist destinations—and one of its most despised tourist traps. By the end of the nuclear exchange, Gatlinburg found itself stuck with a tourist population that outnumbered the local inhabitants. The city spent its first few years following the Great War under a revolving door of gangs, from prewar law enforcement, to tourists, to refugees, to survivalists, until finally settling down under the rule of the Smokey Mountain Gang [sic].

The Smokey Mountain Gang has its roots in prewar organized crime and outlaw motorcycle clubs, but is significantly affected by the presence of Gatlinburg’s stranded tourists. Although they’re petty warlords as brutal as any other, the Smokey Mountain Gang understands the precarious position they’re in, situated between East Tennessee, the Appalachian Free State, and a vast exclusion zone that stretches all the way from Knoxville to Huntsville, Alabama. To maintain their continued existence, the gang carefully avoids provoking their neighbors and offers them their commercial services. To this end, they’ve built up Gatlinburg as one of the country’s most prosperous wasteland bartertowns and a kind of “release valve” for the Appalachian people’s baser urges. As far as the AFS is concerned, it’s better to contain all the vice in Gatlinburg, where it’ll remain the gang’s problem, than to bottle it all up and have to repress it within their own territory.

This crude working arrangement has secured Gatlinburg’s place in America, at least for the time being. It’s a good, though rough-and-tumble place to use as a neutral meeting grounds, sell goods and loot, drink, get in fights, recruit mercenaries and bounty hunters, and trade stories from across the wasteland.

Overmountain Men

Capital: Loudon
Classification: Legitimist Warlord (Militia regime)

Although the Tennessee River Valley was badly affected by nuclear fallout after the Great War, there remained a small, yet valuable pocket of land between the Tennessee and Little Tennessee rivers. This region may have been sparsely populated, at least when compared to cities like Jackson and Columbia, but they possessed a disproportionate share of Tennessee’s remaining heavy industry. These small industrial towns, Loudon, Vonore, Sweetwater, and Athens, banded together in a loose municipal alliance for the first years of the Starving Time.

The Loudon pocket didn’t face any insurmountable challenges, but even the modest threats of NEZ raider gangs and agitated refugees put heavy strain on the informal alliance. Loudon made heavier demands of its partners, and the other cities eventually refused to cooperate. This culminated in a rebellion by the smaller towns against Loudon, which set the city over the tipping point. An austere survivalist militia known as the Overmountain Men, formed by the city to combat the NEZ dwellers, staged a coup and installed themselves as the leaders of Loudon. They quashed the southern rebellion with ruthless efficiency and subjugated them under Loudon’s rule. Now, the southern towns have no choice but to offer tribute to Loudon and its ruling militia.

Things are now looking grim for the Overmountain Men, however. The powerful Appalachian Free State has emerged right on their doorstep and is interested in Loudon’s industrial assets. Even if the Overmountain Men could manage to fend them off on their own, traitorous elements in the southern towns are reaching out to Asheville for aid in overthrowing the Loudon militiamen.