Duexieme Outremer

Purpose:

There are large portions of the planet, in the Cosmic Era, that are strategically and economically important. These regions suffer from the fact that there are not enough people to hold them, and many parts of the globe have reverted to being technically 'uninhabited' IE there are simply either no people living there or the number of residents is so low as to be unimportant. The Atlantic Federation has an interest in consolidating its power between the AfroZone (central Africa) and the EuroZone (western Europe) and the Mediterranean is mostly considered wasteland/unclaimed/4th world territory. This means that while there are a few towns and cities, population density is very low, and there are no central governments beyond city/tribal organizations. Industry and agriculture are typically subsistence levels, and there are no organized military forces.

The Utopia Initiative and the Andromeda Council overlapped in their desire to see the north coast of Africa revitalized, and laid out a decades-long plan of colonization, remediation, and economic stabilization. Areas of interest included the Canary Islands, several formerly major cities in Morocco (Agadir, Marrakesh, Tangier) Algiers in Algeria, Tunis in Tunisia, and Tripoli in Libya. These were all technically collapsed states, as the only coherent government in North Africa at the time was the Republic of Mas'r, more commonly known as Egypt.

One important fact to consider, during the formation of this colonization plan, there was a single movement inside the Federation that was leading the charge, assuming the risks, and would take the lion's share of the reward if it panned out, the Carolingian Resurgence, aka the Gallic Consortium. New France.

The First Stepping Stone:

The Las Palmas Seacoplex was the first stepping stone. Located on the largest of the Canary Islands, Las Palmas started as a reinforced spaceport, then rapidly expanded to a demi-arco-based city. Seacologies were propagated through the waters around the island, as well as a major port facility to service Ark class super-liners, raft cities, and tourist super-submersibles. This started establishing Las Palmas as a tourist destination, and a place of general interest. It would also function as an aerodrome for aerospace fighters, carry-alls, and dropships. As far as CE construction projects go, Las Palmas is ... underwhelming.

But it was the starting point.

The next wave was a three-point land grab into old Morocco. Agadir was nothing more than ruins, so bulldozing the city and quickly building up into Montgomery. The tower was built in a traditional arco pattern and was notable for its forestry initiatives. Arboreal auxons propagated massive numbers of trees, replenishing lost vanished cypress, pine, yew, argan, and tamarisk. The city was made attractive to new settlers and was touted for non-existent taxes, strong local support, and a luxurious tropical climate.

Agadir was exporting grain, fresh produce, lumber products, chlorophyll, and other sundry goods.

The cutting-edge fashion in Agadir was a red fez and a loose-fitting white blouse.

The Unfurled Flag

The first major victory of the New Outremer campaign was the claiming of Tangier. All of the previous gains were building momentum and taking ground. Tangier held both strategic and cultural value. For strategic purposes, Gibraltar and Tangier formed the mouth of the Mediterranean. If the Federation maintained both, Eurasian ships and submarines would have to pass between them to gain access to the Atlantic, and the AfroZone and EuroZone would technically be considered bordering powers. The cultural aspect was somewhat ... darker. Drawing on the mystique of predatory poets, illicit narcotics, and other fabrications of African exoticism, Tangier would be sold to Federation investors and settlers as a place for decadenti, hedonists, counter-culturalists, Hellfire clubs, sybarites, and anyone who was really looking to find the darker part of their soul to produce things of artistic value or revel in that culture.

Castle Casablanca was the first of the Castles Avalon built in New Outremer and was the dominating structure of the new Tangier. The arcology largely resembled a stark white lighthouse and was surrounded by a large and very gentrified urban rim. Gassner Industrial architecture was heavily employed, but rather than drab concrete and excessive use of cyberchic neon lighting, the large buildings were plastered with facades matching the Moorish style of building, and aside from randomly colored roofs, the buildings were washing to a gleaming white.

New Tangier, or as it was increasingly known, Casablanca or New Interzone City, became a rather sordid place. Drug use and the sex trade were plied with a heavy hand. Tourists were given a fast past to getting wasted on alcohol, hashish, and dozens of other increasingly euphoric, hallucinogenic, and narcotic drugs. There were dens created to cater to almost every possible pleasure of the flesh, from base to sublime, gleaming corporate sexual offerings and things that leave the soul dirty and linger in nightmares to years afterward, all wrapped in a gleamingly white city by the sea. Artists, musicians, celebrities, and more flocked to visit the city, and a massive entertainment district sprang up.

The New Tangier cinematic movement can be described as either the renaissance of Blaxploitation film, where dozens of popular films and fundamental stories were retold or rebooted in the wilds of Morocco or a new artistic movement that embraced the feral nature of super Saharan, non-Egyptian, Africa. Both are accurate to their own extent, and both are also missing something. New Tangier cinema mixed the raw violence of machismo and the Wild West, replacing Indians with vividly colored African tribes and remnants of Petroleum Era African powers, and cowboys with settlers, or the romantic mystique of Lawrence of Arabia, but a bit further west.

After the fall of the Gibraltar Submarine Naval Yards to the Eurasian Alliance, the Federation doubled down on New Tangier and installed a second spaceport southwest of the city, as well as adding new dock facilities and rerouting all Federation marine traffic through New Tangier instead of Gibraltar.

The Capital

Tunis, the capital of Tunisia was once another city, one much greater in the annals of history. Carthage.

The Atlantic Federation had a great interest in revitalizing this laconic Mediterranean City and turning it into the new capital of New Outremer, resurrecting New Carthage.

It went after this with a purpose. With ground support available from Tangier, and the Canary Island installation construction of the New Carthage Castle Avalon went at nearly breakneck speed. The walls were quickly lifted, and the geofront burrowed deep into the earth. Two seacologies grew outward from the base, supplying water, cooling, and hydroculture to support the burgeoning city. Investors who had made big money investing in the previous charters of Tangier and the Canary Islands were in and had made enough that the more risk-averse investors had noticed and were also coming on. While Hasdrubal Castle was being built, a number of picket fortresses were studded away from the city to create a perimeter. Likewise, anti-submarine raft pocket-cities were floated out to protect the main city from the sea.

The principal fort was a Capital class iron-top designated Fort Montgomery. This was the most distant of the forts, and it housed a mechadrome large enough to service a battalion, a full infantry regiment in barracks, and two battalions of armored vehicles. The top of Fort Montgomery was the size of an escort carrier, and acted as such, launching turbofan and electrofan VTOL and VSTOL aircraft for aerial patrols. It had emergency facilities for landing aerospace craft, but this was on the desert hardpan, and the craft would have to be retrieved by a carrier or would have to be refueled and launched under their own power. Six lesser forts were part of the southern perimeter, having a small structure, and lesser facilities. Some of these were little more than knock-up buildings set over deep bore wells to supply them with water. These had limited ability to rearm mecha and combat vehicles, and could only do the most basic of repairs. Anything more serious would require the machine to be moved to Ft. Montgomery or back to the master yard at Castle Hasdrubal.

The real power of the perimeter forts was that the forts had at the bare minimum, a single piece of naval-grade weaponry. The most common piece of equipment was a single-barrel light naval laser turret. This weapon had a low rate of fire due to the often limited power supply available from the fort's power core. A few raiders assumed this was a deficit of the weapon and learned otherwise the hard way. Ft. Auchenleck had two turrets, each with a light naval laser, and the weapons were observed to have a maximum rate of fire of about 45 seconds between discharges. Captain William Melton improved the main turret's rate of fire by ordering the engineers and technicians for the weapon system to hook into the reactor of his Thunderbolt mech. With the mech idling its powerplant, the recharge rate dropped from 45 seconds to 34 seconds. When pushed to redline, 34 dropped to 19. Ft. Auchenleck survived the assault from the desert wasteland with minimal casualties and the largest bit of collateral damage was a scrammed Magna 260 fusion plant, the reactor of the Thunderbolt.

The perimeter rafts were more raft neighborhoods than cities and were between six and nine acres in size. Their mobility was limited and most remained in place via anchors and station-keeping trolling motors. The center of the raft was a large warehouse structure, and each could accommodate a platoon of infantry, landing facilities for one or two VTOLs, and a docking facility on one side. The underside of a raft resembled a jellyfish, as it trailed sensors, hydrophones, and other passive devices in the current. These tested the water and watched for Eurasian Alliance submarines. The rafts had three means of defense, a pair of light anti-ship torpedo launchers on the raft itself, a contingent of micro-subs (scuba-jets), and the ability to radio back to Hasdrubal for reinforcements. The castle can then respond with long-range artillery, and aerospace assets, or call in the fleet to respond with a heavy cruiser or three.

Swords and Plowshares

The fortresses are not just for show. They are not even really creating a perimeter for the city. They are static/point defense for one of New Carthage's largest investments. The Pomona AgriComplex and the associated mechanized farming combines are intended to make New Carthage not just a capital, but the largest food exporter in North Africa. The New Carthage Trading Company (NCTC) was chartered to organize the operation of the AgriComplex and run the mega-installation with the main interests of exporting grain, vegetable substrate (once used as cattle feed, but capable of being processed into human food) fruit tree produce, and eventually lumber products. The Forestal Initiative is also present at New Carthage and operations have been put in place to see new forests seeded and tended to sweep away from the coast and towards the Atlas mountains. Through the use of gene-modified seed stock, auxon drones, and forestry professionals it was believed the Atlas Forests of pine, yew, cypress, and other native tree species could be restored in less than a century, with major advances in less than twenty years.

Outremer, the Gathering

There were two lines of thought for advancement: continue along the coast until New Outremer reached the New Egyptian border, or hold at New Carthage and invest more in-depth in the held territories to bring them closer to Federation statehood. In true Federation style, the official answer became 'why not both'.

Investment - While holding Las Palmas, Agadir, Tangier, and New Carthage, investment firms, charter groups, and other resource accumulators worked to bring more people and material into the established zone. Part of this was building more infrastructure for the existing cities, which was more than welcome. The newly opened NorthAf territory attracted not just investors, but Federation citizens and Federation immigrants, and these people didn't just want a safe place to live cheaply, they wanted to set up homes, start families, live happy lives and have lots of children. Morocco would see investment into building demi-arcos in Casablanca proper and Marrakesh restored to its Colonial/African splendor and turned into a tourist destination. Algiers would be reclaimed and similar to New Carthage it would be heavily invested in to become a food production center, with more grain, vegetable substrate, and even heirloom livestock for those willing to pay real money for real meat.

The Chott Restoration Project would see money and energy invested into the Algerian chotts, a chott being a shallow alkaline lake. The north part of the country has a string of these lakes, many vital to native wildlife. Heavy restoration projects would see the lakes refilled, their borders cleaned out, and in many places, the local wildlife restored and replenished even if it required the introduction of recently de-extincted species via genimal stock. This, combined with reforestation and efforts to push the Sahara back, North Algeria would become a new Serengeti, full of African animals, African mystique, and natural beauty. There would be highly exclusive resorts on some of the chott, wildlife visual safari, and for some, big game and extreme game hunting.

Expansion

The Federation's sights are set for Manifest Destiny and an Oasis/City hopping strategy to reclaim the region. Why North Africa and not say, Italy, and central and eastern Europe? With less opposition and fewer surviving nations, the cities that remain on the southern coast of the Mediterranean are smaller, further apart, and compared to the still largely populated European swath of technical Wasteland, much more friendly. The effort and cost sunk into creating New Outremer, if applied to the European wasteland would have possibly gained the Federation a foothold into Northern Italy.

The next targets for the Expansion plans are the Libyan city-states of Misrata and Benghazi. Misrata bypasses the larger and more difficult to subjugate city-state of Tripoli, and allows for it to be placed between the anvil of New Carthage, and the hammer of Misrata occupation forces. After Misrata, Benghazi would be rebuilt into a planned Castle Avalon pre-named Castle Apollo. This would largely be a military installation and a center point for expanding into the eastern prominence of Libya and potentially forming the Eastern capital of New Outremer. As with the expansion policy for Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, following the completion of Castle Apollo, the expansion would be pushed across the Libyan coast, and inland. Farms, natural biome remediation, and wildlife restoration would follow.

Fort Tobruk and the New Rommel Plan

The last stage of New Outremer is the occupation of Egypt. This is expected to be the most difficult part, as the region has some semblance of state-level government, and para-military forces, and there are a number of mercenary recruitment centers, warlords, and such. It is a part of the Wastelands that is very much okay with being a central hub of said wastelands, and a major part of the Silk Road of trade. The Libyan city of Tobruk would be taken and rebuilt into a forward command center where Federation armed forces could sortie against the northern end of the Nile rive, and across into the Sinai and Levant with relative ease. It would also allow for the launching and retaking and remediating of major islands in the Mediterranean. It is expected that Sicily, Crete, and other large islands will join the Federation long before Italy, Greece, or any of the former Balkans nations will. The New Rommel plan is the military incursion into Egypt, occupation of key points, and the pacification of urban centers.

It is expected to actually be a relatively violent and bloody affair, and there are major concerns about the Eurasian Alliance supplying aid to Egyptian and wasteland factions opposing the Federation, or the operation actually starting a land war between the two New Earth Governments.

Reality Check

The Investment and Expansion plans are on hold, because there are several major problems to contend with. The largest is that of Armless Anmortis, and her backers in Hidden Enoch and the Noddites who strongly oppose the Atlantic Federation fucking around on what they consider their turf. Anmortis has launched multiple crusades out from Enoch (which is likely somewhere near the southern extent of the Nile, but not inside the Federation AfroZone, and this has stymied both Investment and Expansion plans. Her raids have smashed forts in the desert, burned agroplexes, and raided new settlements for not just supplies, but the people living there as well.

These two articles overlap. Armless Anmortis records her 13 crusades and culminated with the destruction of New Carthage, while New Outremer follows on as if Anmortis hasn't happened. There are two reasons for this. One is that the two represent opposing movements and forces. The Federation is pushing East and South with the intent to gentrify and remediate North Africa into a new State to join the Federation, increasing their domain, resources, and power. Anmortis and the Enochians are the underdogs who will burn the Federation forces to the ground and fight them blood for blood every step of the way. The second reason is that they are not presented as canon. If you like New Outremer, there is no reason to let the Enochians rampage, and the Federation goes East and you can add Stargate/Egyptian elements to Outremer and the Federation. If you prefer the Enochians and their Brotherhood of Nod technophilia, then New Carthage burns, the Federation is repulsed, and it's a new generation of war in the desert.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.