I don’t know if I’m going to need this, but better to have something written ahead of time.
Huddles in the War
It took the Dominion longer than it should have to realize that huddles were a strategic resource for them, particularly in what quickly had become a defensive war. More than one Dominion military campaign ended in failure because their strategists operated under the assumption that any losses among their mind-dulled soldiery would be routinely made up by captured military and civilians. It took them a while to switch to a model where huddles were allocated sufficient resources to survive, and possibly even increase, and even then the decentralized nature of the Dominion meant that directives from Supreme Archmages to be more ‘efficient’ did not always have the effect they desired. Many Sephiroths did not take the Grand Alliance seriously as an enemy, right up to the moment where their towers caught fire.
Captured huddles proved to be an interesting problem for Alliance forces. The general living conditions typically conditioned huddlers over the age of twelve into being utterly servile to anyone bearing armor and arms. Attempts to break them of this conditioning proved only variably successful, although their children at least would prove to be more independent-minded. Many huddles were simply evacuated en masse, and brought to new homesteads far from the front lines, ‘ruled’ by retired soldiers that could be trusted not to take advantage of their situations. Many of these settlements still exist. Even after years or decades of assimilation, their inhabitants can be a bit… anomalous.
Reasons for Visiting Abandoned Huddles
Unfortunately, the primary reason is that abandoned structures in Dominion territory make excellent monster lairs. The Dominion has always designed its monsters that way; every ruined town full of ravenous, flightless geese is one less town that can be used contrary to the wishes of the Universal Dominion. Cleaning out abandoned huddles is remunerative, if mildly risky work, well suited for Adventurer companies and other freelancers. There won’t be any loot from the original inhabitants, but fresher victims might have had valuable things in their pockets.
A second reason is that while the Mississippi valley during the Old American period might not have been as built up as the East and West Coasts, it was still home to a thriving industrialized civilization. Many huddles ended up being within walking distance of promising archeological sites. A few can even be found over those sites; the original inhabitants invariably at least attempted to mine them for useful metal or plastic. Sometimes the makeshift mining operation is the reason why there are no longer any original inhabitants.
The third reason is considered a delicate topic. Dominion huddles are places of deliberate, careful misery, applied over centuries without relief or reprieve. This makes them prime candidates to be haunted. Huddle ghosts are angry, distrustful, and thankfully very rare — and where there’s one, there’s usually another twenty. In that state, they’re also dangerous to travelers.The Alliance is divided in how to handle this problem — or, rather, the Second Republic disagrees with everybody else.
Most of the Alliance takes the position that these ghosts need to be counseled, relieved of their anger, and carefully, peacefully, and gently encouraged to Move On to the afterlife. The Second Republic instead favors a policy of lighting up a ghost-beacon, and leading the ghosts to the nearest Dominion encampment. Second Republic necromancers justify this on the grounds that spectral retribution can be very cathartic, really. And as for the targets of said retribution? Well, to quote the Old American folk hero: they were all bad.