[b]Name:[/b] The Greenbriar Confederacy [b]Flag:[/b] [b]Territory:[/b] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/930619394080534579/930637554347278347/Fallout_NRP_Virginy.jpg[/img] (Because I realized the shape of the original claim did not centralize the Greenbriar Inn well enough, I have made some adjustments) [b]History:[/b] [hider] Prior to the Great War, the Appalachian region was never much of a densely populated region. Neither was it extravagantly wealthy. While billions were torn out of the ground by the mining interests, very little of that wealth ever stayed in the mountains for long. Even as the unions fought for better wages and benefits to ensure the people of the region had a respectable living standard, the interests of American capital were dead set against them, and the unions were bludgeoned into submission since the end of the Second World War, and finally total corporate control was seized. In the time since as industrial interests moved elsewhere the Appalachians fell behind, notable only for its tourism, many of the communities so dependent on mining fell by the way side and a communitarian ethos was forced to emerge to deal with it, even as they were more and more cannibalized by the American state. By the time the great resource wars erupted against China a renewed interest in the region was had by America's government and private interests who returned to the area, attracted by the region's lax legal protections and militarily: the physical defensive advantages by the mountains themselves. While mining resumed to make up for the short falls in energy production elsewhere a wide array of other industries returned and once again the engine of the Appalachias roared again to life as its mountains throbbed with new activity in the dark bosom of its hallowed ancient rock. But: no more new wealth came of it. While wealthy professional workers came to work in Appalachia in the emergent high-tech industries of the war and to follow military and Vault production in the mountains the Appalachian natives were ignored and resentment grew. Open hostilities erupted before the nukes even came and there was fighting between self-declared secessionists and the government and its cronies. The century muted expression of blue-collar resistance that had been long suppressed since the late 1940's, and long controlled for in the mutated relationship of government, corporation, and union could no longer be sufficiently suppressed as the world as everyone knew it came to a crashing, atomic end. As many with tickets fled to the vaults many more fled to the mountains the mines and the caves to escape the atomic blasts that flared in the Appalachian mountains. The region fared well compared to others, with the ancient rock of the almost antediluvian range suppressing and restraining the full might of the atomic warheads that assaulted American military installations throughout the region. The area was almost immediately ready to return to a life before the resource crisis. However, the ghosts of the past are hardly so easy to excise. The scabs and dicks and cops that the companies and the government brought in to suppress the local unions took on a new form free from their handlers and without any loyalty or connection to the land went to war against and each other and formed quickly into the post-war raider armies that for decades after wrecked havoc across the region and fomenting an era of anonymous warfare, a dark age in the mountains where the resources of the region were beaten and abused and nearly drained in successive waves of raider war parties and mutant hunting bands and the extermination efforts of outside actors. The area was almost emptied of life, and what remained held on with dear life. That is, until the vaults re-opened. The appearance of the vault-dwellers helped to change everything. Drained of resources and manpower the raiders were easily over-come. As well the securing of the scant few un-used missile silos became indispensable tools in ridding the region of the monsters that plagued it. With the breaking of the raider cliques and the super mutant armies life was able to return to the region and communities re-establish their lines that had, until the War been unbroken. It would be several decades until true peace returned to Appalachia, as communities feuded with one another over territory, resources, and even people; being disturbed from within and without other parties. But over time, the settlers settled. Beginning at the ruins of the Greenbriar Inn, a handful of local settlements. They would come irregularly to common ground and negotiate disputes. Or settle affairs with duels. The relationship they brokered with one another there was informal. But as the landscape of Appalachia settled back into its rhythms the centrality and notability of the Greenbriar Inn became important to the people there, and of the nearby bunker for safety. This time is spoken of as the Greenbriar Accord, an informal understanding between all parties in West Virginia and much of Virginia that if there was a problem: to come to the Greenbriar. As the decades turned to a century, the informality of the Greenbriar became more formal. Its importance more secure. No document was ever signed or drafted, ritual merely established itself as on the equinoxes settlements and communes would meet at the Greenbriar in council with one another. There they would openly discuss their issues, their compliments, and all matters of the world with one another. Talks helped to formalize relationships, allowing for the management of resources along the region. Disparate groups would travel far to have a seat at the Greenbriar and become one of the many. And then it came to be: the Greenbriar Confederacy. As it stands: it is merely a tribal confederacy. Hardly a single standing nation. It possess no army, merely the charm of its leadership who use the Greenbriar to stump for their missions, often expanding their petty tribal domains further out into the wasteland to secure more territory, more resources. And when a threat comes: the Greenbriar provides refuge, and a place to rally all hands. [/hider] [b]Pressing Issues:[/b] [hider] Being only just barely more than an informal association between peoples the Greenbriar Confederacy is hardly a cohesive entity or even unified. It is merely united in common recognition of the importance of the meetings at the Greenbriar, which have increased to four times a year. Political power within the confederacy in unevenly distributed according to the natural wealth of the area which a tribal community or family occupies, or the relative social importance of that territory; chief being the Greenbriar Inn itself and Greenbriar County as a whole. The Confederacy is most often harassed by raiders to the north coming from Pittsburgh, and the northern frontier of its association is often in a near constant low-level bush war with them. Many of the more powerful interests of the Confederacy share concern over the potential threats the more organized forces in Ohio bear for them, if any at all. They simply disagree on what can be done about it. While the former Capital Wasteland is still fairly distant, it is near enough to attract some curiosity and watchfulness. It's just that like Ohio: are they a danger. The people of Appalachia are superstitious to say the least. They believe in many off things. The existence of Moth Man, or the moth men and it is a common caravan tale to speak of strange figures preceding disaster for anything not built rigid. Of highest priority to some, and even of the foolish young adventurer that leaves the Holler in search of glory is whether or not the Scorch Beast and its kin were ever destroyed, and its said their black wings still shade the murkiest parts of the mountains. The Confederacy is not well developed, even compared to most. Many pre-war highways had to cross immense valleys and in the time since the war they have fallen. Travel through the area has returned to older trails and roads that snake through the low valleys and hug tight to the high mountains and not many of the hollers are themselves well connected with one another. News of the wider world often simply just comes from Greenbriar meetings when and if delegates are sent. If there is one thing they do have though: it is the radio. Though radio coverage is as the roads are: spotty and broken and wild, often irrelevant and dead-ends.[/hider]