Cog

When the Barons first took charge and forged order out of chaos, people flocked to them for protection. In what was a lawless world, the Baron’s shadow offered the promise of hot food and a warm place to sleep. However, through the years, as the Barons grew in power, protection gave way to servitude and the free became indentured.

Most **Cogs** have nowhere else to turn – they sell their life or the lives of their children to keep from starving or worse. However, as inequality grows between the classes, the Cogs grow restless for change by any means necessary.

## Use of Cogs

Most, if not all, Barons use cogs to get jobs done free of cost. Whatever the Baron territory uses in trade, be it either oil, agriculture, or even cogs themselves, cogs are used to gather up each trading item to trade said item with another Baron so something else in return. Barons use this technique to gain their profits without necessarily losing anything. Cogs get little to no reimbursement and are not cared for by their Baron.

Though Barons show they don't care for cogs and wish no good for them, cogs are far more important than they realize. When cogs flee from their Baron, the Baron does feel the effects as their production is slowed and they realize they might have to deal with some sort of rebellion from the escaped cogs. This became extremely evident when The Widow's rebellion became prominent. Cogs fleeing their Barons and joining the Widow's rebellion caused tension in all of the badlands. Barons became more harsh on cogs and even declared war against the Widow.

In a great number of ways, cogs are a new word for peasant, in the feudal world of the Badlands. The system is a simplified version of the feudalism. Barons are the ruling class, with Clippers as their warriors, similar to knights and samurai in service to a Lord. Cogs are the peasantry, existing to do the farming and trades work in a lords domain. Cogs are the subjects of their Barons, just as peasants were the subjects of their Barons.

## Rebellion

It is unknown whether cogs had rebellions before but the most recent was with The Widow's rise to power as she led a cog rebellion against all other barons after she killed her husband and gained the barony.

The rebellion of cogs were evident in many baronies. Especially for Barons Ryder, Hassan, and Chau. After the supposed death of Quinn and death of Jacobee, Ryder became the baron of two territories and even had control of The Widow's oil fields for some time. However, The Widow's rebellion caused cogs to flee Ryder and join her forces. Ryder was alerted that production of oil was slow due to fleeing cogs just moments before he was ambushed by The Widow who regained her oil fields by force. Just moments before Baron Hassan was killed by The Widow, he too realized that his cogs were fleeing and his barony's production was slow because of it.

Baron Chau may have been the most affected of all baronies, due to the sole fact that she is the Baron of Cogs themselves and they are her major source of profit. Chau was only able to sort of balance her cog levels due to the fact that she could easily get a fresh supply of cogs from people sold in from theOutlying Territories. She still had plenty of cogs fleeing, however, and her being the last surviving Baron, along with The Widow who wants to free cogs, she had no trading partners as all other barons were killed by The Widow, or Quinn, she had no way to trade cogs for any other resource from the other territories. This then led to the biggest war in Badlands history.

## Trivia

* Not all Barons favored cogs, or at least the brutal treatment of them. Baron Rojas may have been way more lenient towards his cogs more than other Baron, due to him siding with The Widow at the conclave.
* Minerva, Quinn, and Jade were all cogs once before but all raised to barony one way or another.
* Due to the lack of industry, Cogs may be the most important resource in any barony as all barons have them and rely heavily on them for the output of their production.
* Much like Jade and even The Widow, cogs can automatically jump up into the highest rank in the Badlands if they get married to a Baron.
* Some cogs may be more "valuable" than others due to a certain skill. Veil was a cog but was known by her Baron and was even protected because of her skill in medicine.

## References

1. ↑ http://www.amc.com/shows/into-the-badlands/exclusives/the-world