Upstate Command

The **Upstate Command** was the informal but internally-used name for a collection of Enclave installations within Upstate New York that reported to an appointed military-leader in Lake Placid. It was one of the largest remaining sects of Enclave until it's absorption into the Buffalo Enclave in 2280.

## **History**

### **Pre-War and The Great War**

Beginning in 2074, the government of the United States began to develop a series of extensive bunker complexes along it's northeastern Canadian border, between Buffalo and Caribou. The first of these constructions took place in Upstate New York, where the Lake Placid Regional Defense Command complex was established beneath the village. Intended to be the headquarters for the western section of the network, it was directly tied to the other completed bunkers within Upstate New York with a subterranean communication system.

By early 2077, the completed facility beneath Lake Placid was designated as a fallback point for Enclave-related military units and local government officials in the region. By the time of the Great War, only around a quarter of the bunkers initially planned were actually completed, all located within rural Upstate New York, and the lack of preparation on the part of local officials meant that very few survived who were not active serving members of the Enclave. The network of survivors was therefore almost entirely without non-military leadership, and lost communication with other Enclave installations beyond the network. This culminated in the appointment of a Secretary of Defense, who was to be the de facto leader of the newly-formed Upstate Command.

### **The Long Quiet** (2077 - 2214)

Following the complete atomic annihilation of the United States, the Upstate Command was left in a period of unease, and surrounded by the eerie silence that dominated Upstate New York. The region was severely depopulated by the Great War, and nuclear fallout made the area borderline inhospitable for decades. It was nicknamed 'The Triangle' by survivors, and tales of beasts and murderers made many steer clear. The Enclave's dominance in the region was uncontested, and their patrols typically only ever encountered roaming ferals or mutated creatures.

This all changed in 2214. The establishment of the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel in previous decades saw the Midwest become a generally-safer place for travel, and Buffalo became a commerce hub. Trade passing from West to East typically passed through Buffalo to avoid the Appalachians, and trade with major settlements such as Toronto was concluded almost exclusively through Buffalo. A natural consequence of this was an increase of traffic in Upstate New York, which made the Enclave's open doctrine untenable, and they returned to hiding.

### **Vault 109**

The Upstate Command, in 2220, stumbled upon Vault 109. A control vault, it was equipped with a G.E.C.K, and harboured a significant population of purely, non-irradiated humans. The Upstate Command, like many Enclave divisions, had long dealt with issues relating to gene diversity, and incest was becomming widespread; Vault 109 was seen by Lake Placid as a solution to this issue. The Vault became an Enclave facility, and much of it's population volunteered to join the Enclave due to the prospect of leaving the Vault. The Upstate Command's numbers were bolstered, and the addition of a Vault to it's network of controlled facilities was invaluable.

Unfortunately for the Command, the acceptance of Vault Dwellers into the Enclave proved controversial among many of the die-hard elitists within the Enclave, and this issue would persist for decades to come, eventually serving as the catalyst for a future conflict.

### **Rising Storm** (2220 - 2270)

The Rising Storm was a period of time characterised by significant changes in Upstate New York. The trade route that ran through Buffalo and the northern regions of the state caused the establishment of many new settlements, which in turn saw organised factions begin to appear. The Upstate Command was no longer the sole power in the region, and as it had sworn itself to secrecy, didn't even have any form of authority over them. Command patrols began to accidentally come across caravans and travellers at an increasingly frequent rate, and while most were killed, many survived, and reports began to spread of 'ghost men' in black armour who kill travellers in the woods, the Enclave by accident having become something of a local myth.

Attracted by the spreading rumours of the so called 'ghost men', believed by more sophisticated minds to be a highly-sophisticated faction in northern New York, a detachment of the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel arrived in Buffalo, and founded the Buffalo Chapter in order to study their unknown potential enemy. As they had never seen the Brotherhood, the Upstate Command simply assumed they were a group of well-equipped raiders, and wiped out the Chapter in a surgical strike aimed at recovering, in their eyes, stolen US Military property. Unbeknownst to them, this would set off a series of events that would cause the Midwestern Brotherhood to invest more resources into discovering the true nature of the Upstate Command over the coming decades, further putting the Enclave at risk.

### **Final Decade** (2270 - 2280)

Shortly after the destruction of Raven Rock, and the liberation of Project Purity by the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave in the Capital Wasteland, lead by Colonel Augustus Autumn, began a general retreat from the region. Aside from defending key facilities in the Capital Wasteland, most Enclave forces withdrew to Adams Airforce Base, where Autumn prepared the bulk of the Enclave's remaining men and equipment for transport. While he was able to get most of his forces out of the Airforce Base, many were still in the process of preparing to withdraw by the time AAFB came under attack, and Autumn was left without vital supplies and men needed to launch his planned counterattack. Instead, he and his forces withdrew north to Buffalo. He was 'elected' president, and shortly after discovered the existence of the Upstate Command.

While initially hesitant to join this new, radical group of Enclave, the divide caused decades prior following the opening of Vault 109 caused many of the elitist-leaning facilities within the network to side with Autumn. By 2280, only Lake Placid remained. The bulk of the forces remaining at Lake Placid, mostly comprised of descendants of Vault 109 dwellers, abruptly left under the leadership of Joseph J. Roosevelt. These forces fled to the Mountain Meadow Bunker, and refused to recognise President Autumn as legitimate.

## **Government**

The Upstate Command operated under a military hierarchy where all facilities and outposts within the Command reported to an elected official in Lake Placid, who typically served in that position for life. As a division of the Enclave, this system of governance was a temporary measure due to their lack of communication with the President of the United States, who was the de jure head of state of the Upstate Command.

The appointed leader of the Upstate Command took on the title of Secretary of Defense, while their second-in-command typically held the rank of Colonel.

## **Equipment**

The Upstate Command was well-equipped, but not as equipped as many of their Enclave bretheren. They lacked a range of advancements commonplace within other Enclave forces, such as plasma-based weaponry.

The Command made extensive usage of both vertibirds and well-maintained helicopters, which afforded them uncontested aerial superiority over Upstate New York and the ability to rapidly deploy forces at a moment's notice.

Forces of the Upstate Command were typically equipped in Power Armour, primarily using heavily modified suits of T-51b, and on occasion the rare T-70. The T-70 was produced shortly before the Great War and as a result it's numbers were limited and suits of it were only rarely found in the hands of non-Enclave personnel. In contrast, the T-51b was much more widespread in relation to it's T-70 cousin, however the modified variant used by the Upstate Command, and many autonomous East-Coast Enclave forces, had it's appearance altered so drastically that the Brotherhood mistakenly believed it to be a previously-undiscovered type of Power Armour.

Laser weaponry was a mainstay in Upstate Command forces though certain projectile-based weapons, such as miniguns, were still fairly common.