The Incorporated States of America

The "Incorporated States of America" is a catch-all term for the territories now owned by mega-consortiums, who gained enough economic leverage in their areas to purchase former states from the US government, during its withdrawal from the West. Entire territories of former states have been absorbed as corporate regions, on behalf of empowered Mega Corporations, that provide the nations of the 21st century with resources and goods. The standards of living are varied, although the people living in these zones are treated little more than company property by the Consortiums. Cities have been revitalized into bustling megalopolises, where the majority of former Americans fled to seek safety from domestic violence and worsening climate conditions. Company towns were built on top of the ruins of older or abandoned townships, and mile-long distribution centers house and employ even more, along their monitored roads and railways. Despite modern or even futuristic living conditions, the Incorporated States are little more than modern-day fiefdoms, where the ruling class lords over their impoverished vassals.

Although generalized as "The Incorporated States", these corporate regions are not affiliated with each other. Rather, each state is represented by separate consortiums, and may even compete with each other for contested resources. Despite claiming almost the entirety of the former states, actual power and authority is limited to the major city zones and immediate surrounding townships. The rest of the land is in varying states of lawlessness or neglect. Neighboring or local Fundamentalists may conduct operations here with limited consent by the Corporate authorities, and local groups may also counter with resistance or communal living.

## Timeline

### 2028

The United states is fractured into multiple conflict zones. Scenes previously only thought to have been apparent in Mosul, Fallujah, and Kandahar now take place regularly on American soil. Congress approves the use of Special Warfare units and air power against the Dominionist factions. Civilians suffer the worst of this decision as the fundamentalist groups use human shield tactics to protect themselves from the worst of the bombings and air strikes. Drones are a constant presence in the sky. Leftist and survivalist groups begin forming the first Independent communities or “InComs”. Semi self-sustaining interlinked communities tucked away in rural areas away from the worst of the fighting.

In the midst of the fighting, corporate interests in Colorado begin to exploit the desperation of the worker class. Offering the chance at security and stability, businesses in some of the states take steps to roll back costly safety measures and inconvenient union oversight. Heavy investment into Private Military Contractors appear on their premises as a double-edged sword. To defend their interests from Fundamentalist and other extremist actors encroaching on their businesses, and to enforce their power over their new employee population. The United States is unable to intervene during such a pitted domestic conflict, and the actions are quickly emulated across the United States.

### 2030

The United States government withdraws the bulk of its resources to the eastern United States, where it maintains control with its battered military. Special Operations Groups continue to function in the shadows on the American West, but the large military actions against Fundamentalist territories no longer take place. New states pop up across former US territory, in defiance against both the US and Dominions. In the absence of the U.S. Military, fundamentalist groups blitz through formerly neutral territory and begin their cleansing.

As the United States withdraws from the West, the corporate powers of individual states begin forming macro-scale Consortiums, to represent their bargaining power to the federal government. Knowing that the United States will still require the influx of goods and products, corporate bodies offer to purchase administrative power back from the United States. Desperate in its military withdrawal, the federal government accepts the terms in most regions, and the Corporate States begin to take form.

### 2031

The apparent sale of some states across the US is almost universally rejected by average Americans. Demonstrations are attempted, but Private Security Contractors are tactically deployed to counter the protestors and neutralize the leadership of said movements. With near-peer access to military-grade equipment, corporate mercenaries are able to counter the Dominions with higher lethality, disregarding collateral damage that the Fundamentalists counted on giving US forces pause.

### 2032

With the secession of multiple new nations in the American Southwest and Pacific Northwest, the Incorporated States begin tightening their control on the local populations in their territories. Strike teams are deployed to neutralize union leaders, and demonstrations are met with violent riot police squads. With US oversight gone and the Dominions contained, PMCs now begin a harsh crackdown on any bad actors cutting into the Consortiums bottom line of production.

### 2035

The present day. With America now a Rump State, it has little power or attention to pay any mind to the rampant abuse the Incorporated States inflict on their employee population. In the cities, stability is relatively peaceful. In the harsh underbelly of the distribution centers and factory prisons, conditions are criminal, at best. The desperation of the average former American leaves few options for families, and workers are forced to hold their grievances, to reduce risk of their loved ones being harmed.

## Government and Politics

The majority of the Incorporated States operate their territorial affairs similarly to one another. The governing bodies of the corporate states pass measures and mandate policies through territory-wide boards of directors. Governance is largely autocratic, and the boards decide who represents their interests, rather than democratic practices. Many on these state-wide boards include previous US representatives, who already had sizeable investments in the businesses of their home states. Their familiar presence has been heavily exploited by the corporate bodies to offer the illusion of transparency and representation with their former constituents. The reality of their civic situation, on the common people's part, is still not fully realized.

## Major Corporate States

### HawkEye FarmCorps (Incorporated Iowa)

The largest agriculture companies in the former state of Iowa formed a macro consortium to purchase the entire territory from the United States in a leveraged buyout. Better-sounding than secession, the US accepted the purchase as it withdrew Eastward. Now the entire state has been converted into a breadbasket collective, where agriculture workers live day-to-day in company-owned dwellings, and work the land in 5-day rotations. Despite the modern standards of living, the people are disenfranchised. Everyone in the state is either a corporate employee, or a “Dismissal”. Dismissals are frequently collected and forced into more taxing distribution centers, where conditions are on par with prison factories. Most of HawkEye’s crops are imported to the majority of North America and abroad, although the staples bound for the Dominions are sold by more illicit means.

### S-M ("Show-Me!") AgroFarms (Incorporated Missouri)

Almost simultaneously with HawkEye, an oligopoly of agrifarm corps in Missouri sought the same leveraged buyout of the state from the USA. However, the US bargained for a larger cost, citing the increasing civil strife in the region. The mega-corp agreed to the deal, and began a near-replica model of HawkEye’s practice, which sparked brief corporate litigation. With no tangible law of the land, this manifested in reprisal by PMC strikes on vital production zones. “Show-Me!” conceded to reparations, as they were unable to afford an additional campaign in the midst of counterinsurgency operations coming from the Dominion of Christ.

“Show-Me!” has had limited success. Its proximity to the Dominions forces the corp to frequently contract security teams to retaliate against Dominion raiders and labor riots. The Siege of St. Louis in 2034 forced the company to move its major operations to Kansas City, after the city was purged by the Dominion of Christ of its minorities, heretics, and deviants.

Another larger successful corp within Missouri is Callaway Kingdom, formerly known as Callaway County, headquartered in Fulton. They operate and maintain the Callaway Nuclear Generating Station, which provides electricity for the surrounding region. Their primacy in handling a nuclear reactor has granted them significant bargaining power in declaring their own autonomy and contracting sizable security forces, to protect the nuclear plant.

### Centennial Holdings (Incorporated Colorado)

Rather than a consortium of companies leveraging the land like with Iowa and Missouri, the entire State of Colorado reorganized itself into a CorpoState, and offered a severance bond of the territory and resources to the US. Since then, the state has prospered in various industries, at the expense of poor living conditions for the labor class. Its main exports are staple crops, manufacturing goods, oil, and offers luxury industries to the rich that can still afford it.

Despite its prosperity, the corporation has frequent dealings with raider incursions from Ungoverned Wyoming, and occasional Texan extremists. Centennial has frequent issues with allowing UN peacekeepers into its territory for policing, citing that it is not a sovereign nation, and therefore does not fall under any UN jurisdiction.  The company goes to great lengths to cover up the treatment of its workers by consolidating them in isolated labor communities, and offering amenities if they sign NDAs for their condition.

### B.S.C. - (Big Sky Company, Incorporated Montana)

A consortium sought to leverage the State of Montana from the US at a bargain during the onset years of the US withdrawal. The company suffered unforeseeable losses when the majority of the population engaged in a guerilla insurgency against corporate security forces. Now, Big Sky Company only holds the Western territory of former Montana bordering former Idaho. The consortium attempted to gain a monopoly on all of the state’s agriculture, forestry, mining, and energy production, but have since prioritized securing the territory from unaffiliated insurgents in the region.

### GemWorks (Incorporated Idaho)

While Big Sky Company dealt with its run of bad luck in Montana, it also served as a buffer between the insurgents and itself. The consortium GemWorks prospered in  Idaho and maintains a monopoly on the entire state’s output. The majority of its business is headquartered in the capital of Boise, now a walled corporate city-state dubbed “The Dome '', segregated from the majority of civil strife elsewhere in the state. A grassroots Dominion has broken off from Montana, moving into Idaho. Elsewhere, local insurgents also hamper production in the region, such as heavily-armed communist nomads.

The Dome has pandered to the Dominion forces in the region to serve as a proxy army that allows them to further squash labor movements or remove “squatters” in territory they wish to exploit. This gives them plausible deniability while the Dominions commit crimes against humanity on behalf of their corporate handlers.

## Military Power

The majority of military power the Incorporated States have at their disposal is through vast Private Military Corporations. Decades of growth throughout the decades-long Global War on Terror have refined these businesses into near-peer corporate counterparts, on par with elements of the most modern of national militaries. Veterans of other nations' militaries are contracted by these companies to serve their interests. In the past, their employees were almost exclusively composed of US and allied veterans of the War on Terror, but now these PMCs have the capacity to train their own recruits from the start, without the need for prior experience.

The sheer volume of security demands were met coincidentally when the US withdrew its presence in these states. The token military forces that weren't evacuated Eastward were offered the chance to be absorbed by the new PMCs that administered security concerns in the region. Entire divisions of former Army and Air National Guard, and their stockpiles, were reorganized into state-level corporate armies. Conditions are above par than the average worker in these territories, allowing for enlistment quotas to be easily met.

### Private Military Corporations by Area

The collective Army and Air National Guard of Iowa was reincorporated as a PMC to serve the interests of HawkEye. Stability has been mostly secured in this region, but most resources are dedicated to countering a minor surge of Sioux Confederacy guerillas encroaching on Iowa's Northern territory.

Assets of Missouri's state Army and Air National Guard was reincorporated into Missouri Army Maneuver & Support, headquartered at Fort Leonard Wood. The former US base serves as a massive trades school, as well as an indoctrination center for new security forces. Although its military capability is sizable, Missouri has lost almost half of its territory to the neighboring Ozark Synod, which they are actively in conflict with over resources in the region.

Along with the majority of Colorado's National Guard assets, the security in the state is managed by Avalanche PMC. Avalanche was founded by veteran US Army Special Forces operators, and their capabilities are on par with their counterparts, in some regards. Their duties are in heavy demand, to prevent Cartel incursion into Colorado, and monitoring Colorado's borders with the Republic of Texas, Mexico, UCR, and the Heartland and LDS Dominions. Avalanche has also been suspected of establishing some limited special operations forces in Ungoverned Wyoming, for purposes that are currently unclear.

Montana had once contracted the local National Guard forces to provide security for their options, but soon opted for the services of Serpent Guard Solutions out of Idaho, once the hostilities became too severe for even military forces to handle. Now, with most of Montana lost, what remains of BSC fell under the umbrella of GemWorks.

## Economy

With the devaluation of the US Dollar, Corporate currencies have taken their place in the territories. Although corporate currencies are prolific throughout the territorial US, employees are rarely paid with sums of this money. However, since every facet of industry, technology, agriculture, and other businesses are exclusively maintained by the Consortiums, the population is employed and compensated for their efforts, in one way or another.

Workers in these zones are largely paid in company scrip, substituting legal tender. Scrip is only recognized in company-owned businesses. As a result of corporate takeover, all real estate is company property, and is subsidized by the state in exchange for employment. Virtually all of the state economies in these zones are corporate-controlled by subsidiaries. Company stores, company recreation, company hospitals, company houses of worship, all perks of working for the company.

The companies offer this company scrip as legal tender to buy food or amenities for subsistence. However, the proliferation of wealth has been severely reduced, and costs for goods are high. Much of an individual worker’s credit is indebted to the company quickly, and the majority of the workers are indentured servants. When workers are unable to provide enough hours for credit, they are summarily “dismissed” and arrested by corporate security forces, who transfer them to corporate prison labor camps, where they continue to produce for the company for less pay and less privileges.

### Resource Capital and Mining in the Dominions

Throughout most of Appalachia’s history, mining corporations have dominated the economies of the region. Despite a noticeable downturn in the years leading up to the collapse of the United States, mostly due to environmental laws and regulations, the Dominions sought to revive a form of the age-old system, with the assistance of the Southern Appalachian Mineral Trust, a new organization formed from the coal companies of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The SAMT holds multiple seats in the Appalachian Dominion’s Ruling Council. Their largest products are fossil fuels, ore, and minerals, such as coal, iron, copper, lead, zinc, phosphate, clay, construction and industrial sand and gravel, crushed stone, marble, gemstones, and lime.

Once-abandoned coal mines all throughout East Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia have been reactivated, and the nearby towns repurposed, either as penal labor camps or corporate towns. New surveys have been launched into tapping into the untouched West Tennessee coal deposits, to the opposition of the oligarchs who control agricultural interests in that region. Mountaintop removal and strip mining has been by-and-large deemed inefficient due to Federal bombing, and fuel shortages for the heavy machinery required. Underground shaft mining integrating older, more dangerous systems from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have taken precedence. Over 90% of the Southern Appalachian coal output comes from underground shaft mining, in contrast to the 72% from the 2010s.  Workers have begun referring to them as ‘Hell Pits’, due to the extreme danger and high quotas demanded by overseers.

The Mineral Trust also owns ABD Electric, a regional shell corporation, founded to manage electricity generation from the TVA dams and coal plants, working to fill the void left by the shut down of nuclear plants. Iron mining has been revived to a respectable degree in Tennessee, despite the middling quality of the deposits. Combined with Kentucky’s even larger deposits of iron, the Mineral Trust extracted large amounts of ore to feed the New American Wasteland’s ravenous appetite for iron and steel. Copper mining in Polk county has been heavily interfered with by NLA operations in the forests, near mining sites. Years of conflict have disincentivized investment into the sector, despite profits selling copper and sulfur from what limited mining has started being high.

Brown, blue, and white phosphorus extraction has been revived for the most part, to provide fertilizer for corporate farms in Missouri and Iowa. Almost all deposits are concentrated in West and Central Tennessee. Mining and production of Potassium Nitrate has also been attempted, with middling success, to assist in the production of fertilizer and gunpowder. Zinc mining is extensive in the Great Valley region of East Tennessee, and alongside the lead mined from the revived mining in Middle Tennessee, is exported for battery production. Clay, sand, limestone, and gravel are extracted from West Virginia, Kentucky, and East Tennessee, and provide the ABD with an abundance of concrete and ceramics, but most is exported, rather than processed for domestic production. West Virginia gemstones have been morbidly branded as “Blood Stones” by the international market. Celestite, Muscovite, Opal, Selenite, Jasper, and others used in jewelry, tend to be the most valuable extracted by the Mineral Trust’s subsidiaries. Tennessee marble has proven to be a decent revenue draw, as the quality rivals that of quality European Marble, cut and processed at cheaper rates.

### Logistics and Transportation

#### Railroads

After the creation of the Appalachian Baptist Dominion, regional rail corporations sought to ensure their continued relevance. Big Rail was one of the first entities to recognize the new Dominions in 2026, and combined with one of the nation’s major commercial delivery companies on the East Coast, offered the various Dominions a king’s ransom in exchange for keeping their virtual monopoly over the southern Rail system, as well as expanding their power to the hundreds of miles of abandoned tracks and the handful of small short lines. The end result in the ABD was the new Central Mountain Railroad Company, a shell extension of pre-collapse rail corporations, designed to draw the sanctions and allow them to exploit slave labor and monopolistic business tactics with no consequence.

CMRR has arguably become the most powerful entity in the ABD, as their extensive investments to restore the railroad system between industrial hubs has allowed them to keep goods flowing despite the ABD’s road system degrading fast from flash floods, resistance activities, and bad management.CMRR has extended its control past simply owning and operating the railroads, gaining control of most of the ABD’s industrial production. Fueled by the iron mines of the Mineral Trust, and the manganese mines previously, CMRR has been able to meet most of the industrial production required to keep their rail lines, engines, rail cars, and tools maintained. Most skilled mechanics and specialists remaining in the ABD are contracted by the CMRR, or one of their subsidiaries. The end result is both a vertical and horizontal monopoly, allowing the CMRR to produce most of what it needs itself, and force others in the ABD to buy from them. All of this is fueled by slave labor rented from the ABD’s overwhelming prison population. CMRR, unlike its Mineral Trust counterparts (who prefer to rely on Dominion conscripts), also employs extensive use of PMCs as security. This came about due to the Dominion paying them for troop transport, and multiple attacks on their railways, upon delivery. The lackluster performance of ABD conscripts resulted in a heavy investment into security.

## Foreign Relations

Despite declaring themselves as sovereign territories, the Corporate powers of the individual states have little control on the affairs outside the major cities and population centers. As such, little has been done to prevent UN Intervention forces from arriving in the territories. Tensions are high between foreign peacekeepers, and the corporate mercenaries that are contracted to conceal the shady conditions that their employees are treated to.