The Factions of Heavy Gear: The North and The South

It seems that the Heavy Gear Kickstarter is trucking along, so I'm getting excited about the new edition of the game. If they hit their goals, they'll be shipping their starter box with 4 factions.  That will give new players a few different options to choose from, or if you're trying to get your friends into the game (like I will), it will provide some small battle groups you can let others play with. So lets learn a bit more about these four factions, starting with the two most iconic, The North and The South.

The North

Terra Nova’s northern hemisphere is united under the Confederated Northern City States (CNCS), a relatively equal partnership between three nations: the Northern Lights Confederacy (NLC), the United Mercantile Federation (UMF) and the Western Frontier Protectorate (WFP). There are occasional border disputes and squabbles between these leagues, but they generally cooperate, bound by a mutual fear of the expansionist South and common cultural bonds. Most Northerners are members of the Revisionist Church, a faith born on Terra Nova during the long Reconstruction after Earth abandoned the colony.

The CNCS military is the Northern Guard (NG), a professional all-volunteer force made up of soldiers drawn from the regular militaries of the three member-leagues. Each League maintains its own independent army. The Norlight Armed Forces are by far the largest and are extremely zealous, the UMF Army is the best-equipped thanks to the massive manufacturing might of the Mercantile city-states, while the WFP Army is neither large nor well-equipped but is very well-trained, with considerable field experience.

The South

Terra Nova’s southern hemisphere is ruled by the Allied Southern Territories (AST), a puppet alliance used by the powerful Southern Republic (SR) to rule their vassal-states. The Mekong Dominion (MD), Eastern Sun Emirates (ESE) and Humanist Alliance (HA) were conquered in fact if not in name by the SR long ago. The leaders of these nations have more to gain by working with the Republic than against it, but the ordinary people are less happy, as they have no common ties of culture or economics to their oppressors and often must be kept in line by force.

The common defense of the AST is handled by the MILICIA, composed primarily of conscripts drawn from throughout the South and those the League forces no longer want, including criminals. The real might of the South is the merciless Southern Republican Army (SRA). The other leagues are allowed to maintain their own armies, but with strict limits on their sizes, deployment and equipment. The Mekong Peacekeepers (MP) are superbly trained and focused on operations in dense urban and jungle areas, the ESE has no army of its own with each Emir maintaining his or her own retinue, and the Humanist Alliance Protection Force (HAPF) are a small but fanatical force with high-tech weapons, sometimes reverse-engineered from CEF designs.