[center][color=olive][h2]Factions of the Dead South[/h2] [center][color=olive][b]---\/--/\--\/---[/b][/color][/center] [b]Us[/b][/color][/center] [hider=Jonesgroup] [center] [img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fe/7a/e8/fe7ae82a0daefeab4d66597fe76a585c.jpg[/img] "My name's Mama Jones, and this is my land. Has been since before the End. You're welcome to stay, but only if you're willin' to work."[/center] Us! The Jonesgroup is a ragtag team of survivors, mostly drifters who needed to settle down. The Dixies and most other settlements don't just accept random strangers walking up and asking for a place to stay. That's where the Jonesgroup differs: so long as you can contribute something, you're welcome here. Somehow, together, we'll make it. Mama Jones' land is an [url=https://64parishes.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4197.jpg]old Southern plantation house[/url], a large manor-esque building with a sizable footprint of land around it, right on the edge of a town named Bluffton that sits itself right on the edge between Alabama and Georgia. She was quite wealthy before the End. Other than Mama Jones' own room, the house boasts eight other bedrooms that about three people can live in comfortably, meaning most of the Jonesgroup sleep in the house at night. A few sleep in a converted poolhouse out back, which has two more bedrooms itself, and overlooks a backyard pond that the Jonesgroup has been getting its water from. Most of the property's 30 acres are thickly wooded. There's a machete-cut path through the woods that leads out to a street with an old Waffle House on it, and this has also been claimed as Jonesgroup territory, working as both a lookout for oncoming raiders and a second kitchen. In true Waffle House tradition, people still settle disputes by fighting in the parking lot. Population: About 30 Resources: Low Leader: Mama Jones Survival Strategy: Farming, Scavenging, Hunting, Gathering, Trading... [/hider] [center][color=olive][b]---\/--/\--\/---[/b][/color][/center] [center][color=olive][b]Friendly and Neutral[/b][/color][/center] [hider=Dixie Brotherhood] [center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ab/08/d1/ab08d12dd8703ea321d3cb75a2847ef0.jpg[/img] "Get on up outta here, now. From today on out, this here's Dixie soil. Also, never speak to me or my turkey ever again."[/center] If you've lived in the Southeast, you know these types of people. The Dixie Brotherhood began as a loose affiliation of Alabamans and Georgians who held on to their lands through the End, converting their yards into small farms and their barns or trailer homes into workshops. Being largely blue-collar, Southern sorts- the Neighbors call them "hillbillies" when they aren't listening- it's none too shocking that they've recently been united under the speeches of one Sammie Hunter, a man who sees the End as, while surely a tragedy, also an opportunity to rebuild the South into a nostalgic vision of what it once was. With their focus on preserving "Southern Culture" and staunchly traditionalist values, they take none too kindly to suspicious drifters and people from other parts. Nonetheless, most of the food grown in this area comes from them. Population: Many hundreds, scattered about across two states Resources: Mid Leader: The charismatic Sammie Hunter Survival Strategy: Small-hold substance farming with heavy cooperation Appropriate Theme Song: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEWGyyLiqY4[/youtube] [/hider] [hider=Maple Community Neighbors] [center] [img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/04/56/5a/04565a0e4acd66bd629ddf2eda16ba88.jpg[/img] "Welcome to Maple Ridge, neighbor. Get what you need and get on back home."[/center] Aside from the Jonesgroup, the only other group operating out of Bluffton specifically, the Neighbors are a clan of traders. Originally from a nearby town, they migrated to Bluffton a few years back and took refuge in the local gated community, a pretentious upper-middle class affair named Maple Ridge. By some stroke of misfortune or cosmic destiny, not a single person who lived in Maple Ridge before the End survived the Olive Plague, and the people now known as the Neighbors were able to simply walk into the abandoned homes and streets and make it their own. They have made Maple Ridge into an impromptu trading post for every nearby group of survivors, protected from raiders by the community's tall steel gate. Scavengers, farmers, hunters and Dixies all meet together to buy and sell here. As a result, the Neighbors are generally better-off than the Jonesgroup, having more food to spare, better clothes, better supplies and functioning electronics. While we are welcome to trade at their marketplace, they do not allow members of the Jonesgroup- or any one else- to join them. The Maple Ridge community is already full, thank you very much, they say. Population: About 40-50 Resources: High Leader: A very polite but rather touchy middle-aged white man who goes by Trader Joe Survival Strategy: Trading, protecting their community Appropriate Theme Song: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D-VpJP4e-M[/youtube] [/hider] [hider=Liberty's Rangers (created by Enigmatik)] [center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b8/b1/7b/b8b17bd0e23eddc79c4ed05b2b194ba0.jpg[/img] "All it takes for evil to triumph... Yadda yadda yadda you know this one already."[/center] One for all and all for one! Liberty's Rangers are a rag-tag group of well meaning folks with a lot of heart and a lot of disorganisation. Eschewing a settled life, they instead spend their time migrating from area to area to assist those who have fallen under the boot of raiders or ne'er-do-wells. Living mostly off the land or by the kindness of those they assist, freely accepting anyone who accepts their tenents of equality and justice and organising themselves through community consensus. They might not always be the most efficient or effective at what they do, but they carry with them a message of hope and a not-insignificant amount of firepower, and really, that's all you need. Despite their otherwise disunited appearance and operating style, anyone who takes up the mantle of a Ranger is given a blue armband with a five-pointed star to mark their alliegence to the cause, and they liberally use 'Old Glory Blue' whenever they need to leave a mark. Population: Unstable, but usually within a score of 150. Resources: Low Leader: No singular leader, as the Rangers pride themselves on their direct democracy Survival Strategy: Scavenging, recovering goods from raiders, donations from those they've helped. Appropriate Theme Song: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGG6mgonGic[/youtube] [/hider] [center][color=olive][b]---\/--/\--\/---[/b][/color][/center] [center][color=olive][b]Hostile[/b][/color][/center] [hider=Mounted Skulls] [center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/22/c8/96/22c896dbb50d06b5eb8260718ded8ecb.jpg[/img] "You see us coming and you altogether run for cover! We're takin' over this town."[/center] A local raider gang that ranges as far as Columbus, GA on the one side and Auburn, AL on the other. They extort food and motorcycle parts from the Dixies, goods and clean water from the Neighbors and, until recently, fresh-grown food from the Jonesgroup. They dress in your classic biker aesthetic, with the thick leather jackets and the skull bandanas. They've also got a thing for vehicles (which, added to the skull bandanas, gives them their name): more than half of the Mounted Skulls ride on motorcycles, which are used in the post-apocalypse much like the cavalry of the dark ages, for lightening-fast raids and maneuverability. It is not at all uncommon to see a Skull wielding an actual sword in one hand while he rides, prepared to slice at a victim who can't get away. But they aren't strangers to trucks and cars either- an old pick-up or a hatchback can hold far more stolen goods than a man on a bike can. Because of the frightening speed with which they can rush another faction, take their belongings and be gone with the wind, nobody is very sure where their base of operations is. Population: About 80 Resources: Mid Leader: A heavyset young biker named Everett, rumored to have a meth addiction. He's apparently been trying and failing for years to set up a working meth lab. Survival Strategy: Extortion of others Appropriate Theme Song (and trust me, they blast it out their bikes when they ride up on you): [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i97OkCXwotE[/youtube] [/hider] [hider=Gadsen Bannermen (created by Enigmatik)] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/J3w0tlq.jpeg[/img] "Men in this country used to know how to be men. We intend to remind y'all of how."[/center] Originally a pre-collapse right-wing civilian militia based out of northern Alabama, most of the Gadsens perished along with the rest of society when the Olive Plague swept across the world. Most, but unfortunately, not all. Those few members of the Gadsens who survived found that their wildest dreams had come true, and the federal government was no longer around to interfere with their designs. The most visionary of their reduced numbers saw this new world as a tabula rasa to build their dream society: A return to the halcyon days of early America where the men were frontier vanguards, the women were good wives and those that opposed them were destroyed. With this dream in their mind, they began aggressively recruiting, migrating to central Huntsville to construct their new order. Seeing themselves as a new paramilitary government, they violently oppose raider groups like the Mounted Skulls, while also extracting 'taxes' from the communities who fall under their 'protection' in a remarkably raider-like fashion. Population: Some 40 odd Bannermen and another 50 or so 'auxiliary staff.' Resources: High Leader: "Corporal" Dean Gunn, an ex-National Guardsman now entering his mid fifties. Survival Strategy: Small-scale farming and scavenging, extortion. Appropriate Theme Song: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KoXt9pZLGM[/youtube] [/hider] [center][color=olive][b]---\/--/\--\/---[/b][/color][/center]