Just as Dean had thought, in the months that followed the recapture of the Foundry, the refugees that had been displaced by the Bandits in their acts of retaliation across the ruins of the old city had now found themselves hovering outside Elysium.

A secondary settlement was built on a lower plane than Elysium’s walls. These men, women, and children were not Elysian and were largely left to their own devices. They set up their own tents, scavenged for their own supplies, and were only protected and policed by Sentries of the Elysian Militia.

Those who proved useful to Elysium and could be trusted were given incentives to join the inner wall, where heat, food, and water were provided in exchange for their services, while those who could not remained outside of its grace.

It was a two-tier system, and while it presented certain security risks due to proximity of actors who could not be fully welcomed inside Elysium’s sanctuary.

The benefits were manpower, experience, and knowledge that Elysium had always been lacking. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The foundry’s fires continued to burn, and as a drastic measure for new arms production Dean had been working tirelessly with some men in Elysium with engineering or machining backgrounds to produce a reliable firearm that used black powder cases.

Black powder was easy to make, and Dean could make it reliably enough in mass batches if he established proper nitraries. The difficulty was creating primers for shell casings.

He did not have an established chemical plant, nor the expertise, nor resources to build one. This was fundamentally why he opted away from domestic production of smokeless powder.

But... certain resources could be scavenged from common materials in the wasteland like car batteries, thermometers, old industrial tooling or medical equipment, et cetera, that would allow for its repurposed for the production of primers.

If Dean was being honest, the lack of issuing of automatic weapons, outside of his elite units due to the logistical constraints of producing them in house was a problem.

But the militia didn’t need overwhelming firepower, they just needed reliable capacity. Because of this he and his engineers spent a significant amount of time designing and prototyping a bolt-action rifle.

It would need a higher degree of maintenance due to the use of corrosive primers and black powder. But it could be mass issued, and produced for the Militia, and in doing so give them enough firepower to properly defend Elysium from organized assaults.

This was the first of many measures Dean was taking to secure his foothold and territory.

And while this was happening, many of the refugees were tasked with scavenging the recyclable materials that Elysium needed, and given substantial rewards for their success.

Dean was effectively blending a scavenger’s economy with domestic production and giving out food, water, heat, and the occasional medicine in return for anything turned over to Elysium.

In addition to this, Dean had succeeded after months of daily training in producing New Hoplite and Peltast fireteams. Rounding out his numbers, what one would consider a full company of men.

These men were given the best equipment, priority access to resources, and were essentially full time soldiers living in the Agoge just outside Dean’s keep.

But while Elysium continued to advance beyond merely survival, and towards a state of greater consolidation. Their enemies had begun making their own preparations.

Colonel Nathaniel Cross sat in his bunker, he had been dispatching teams north to gain more intelligence Unidentified Rogue Actors such as the one encountered before.

While he was focused heavily on the settlement of Elysium, which he did not know its name.

He also found several other similar proto-states being developed within the ruins of the old world across a territory once thought to be a barren wasteland incapable of supporting life.

Some were primitive, others were close to Elysium in capacity. And others were more advanced still, fostered by local elites who predicted the end of the world early, the same as Dean had, leveraging their wealth and local power to create their own proto-states.

For the Ranger Reconnaissance operators, they found themselves identifying more and more potential threats that had foolishly been given a blind eye by the Union of Columbia.

Colonel Cross read the reports and shook his head. A list of targets was laid out in priority to incorporate or dismantle by the end of the year.

He placed the paper down and leaned back in his chair, sighing as he took a sip from more of the outpost’s moonshine.

He then placed the cup down and cursed softly.

"Fucking idiots... I warned them repeatedly. And now I am supposed to lead an expedition north to clean up their mess? There are at least ten rogue actors here who pose a threat to this FOB, and you want us to take on all of them by the end of the year? Impossible....Simply impossible...."

Luckily, there was nobody nearby to overhear his words, not that he really cared. In truth, he had long since given up on keeping appearances.

Still his finger traced over a singular name.... It was at the top of the list, and the intelligence already gathered on the target had been enough to reclassify it as an Identified Rogue Actor....

"The Republic of Cascadia, huh? Real original.... So... the merchants and bankers want to challenge the Union of Columbia now that the world has entered a state of crisis.... Well, if it’s a war they want, then it’s a war they will get."

He put the folder away in his file and picked up the phone, calling over the internal communications. Once the line connected, he did not hesitate to give his orders.

"I want a task force built that is capable of staging an expedition North. By the end of the year, I want this billionaire’s retreat self-proclaiming itself as the Republic of Cascadia brought to its knees, understood?"

He didn’t wait for a response, Colonel Cross simply hung up the phone after giving the order and leaned back in his seat pouring himself another drink while shaking his head at the absurdity of it all.