Ouvrage

The Carolinian Resurgence is a social and technological surge in north and western Europe that has risen as a socio-ethnic response to the New Hanseatic League. This has been a point of some concern in the Atlantic Federation, as the EuroZone is already unstable enough. The Resurgence has centered around the French language and Francophile culture, as well as a revitalization of the French Gendarmie and Foreign Legions.

The Ouvrage

An Ouvrage is a mobile fortress that is a self contained organism. These were designed and built to embrace the purpose of the Maginot Line without it's inherent weakness, being a static structure. The Ouvrages are functionally aerial warships that have tremendously terrible mobility. The average Ouvrage can only manage thirty to fifty kilometers per hour, and has a maximum altitude of ten to fifteen meters. For the most part, the Ouvrage follows the lay of the land and only moves as it needed.

Operational Capability

Mobile Fortress - the Ouvrage has exceptional armor and firepower. This is used in a defensive and supporting role, and it isn't uncommon for the ouvrage to be used as the anvil in military actions, driving an opponent into the big guns of the fortress. The armor is durable enough withstand bombardment from most warships, and cracking one requires either exotic weaponry, or bringing in full sized battleships. On the firepower size, the Ouvrage isn't concerned with weight and mobility, so their armament isn't concerned with weight of weapons, or ammo concerns. Heavy rail guns, missile batteries, and large numbers of autocannons are popular choices.

Mobile mechadrome

As a mobile mechadrome, the Ouvrage has full facilities for the maintenance, repair, and rearmament of mecha forces. Harkening back to the age of chivalry, the Ouvrage is the fortress that the armored knights sally forth from, except that the knights are mecha, orb craft, power armor forces, and more. This isn't just maintenance, the ouvrage has a fully operational polyforge plant and internal R&D force, and the ouvrages has the ability to modify and deploy it's own very specific mecha. This ties into the romantic chivalrous ideals of the Carolinian resurgence, and the ouvrage mecha are somewhat more ornate and baroque in their design.

Mobile City

Somewhat paradoxically, the ouvrage is a mobile city, and has several thousand inhabitants. These are civilians, women and children, nuclear families. Almost all of them are based around the internal economy and ecosystem of the ouvrage, commercial and entertainment industries, young people looking for a bootstrap career, the families of military personnel, and so forth. Life inside the ouvrage, away from the military sectors, is largely the same as living in any normal arcology. On the military side, the soldiers have a greater motivation for protecting the home fort, and are accordingly fiercely proud of and protective of their fortresses. The ouvage isn't just a flying fortress and military base, it's home.

Biocreche

One of the growing factors inside the Carolinian Resurgence is the development of psychoframe war machines; mecha, aerospace fighters, and orbs, that require the pilot to have technopathic parapsychic abilities. Given the challenges of synthetic parapsychics, and that finding volunteers is difficult. To address this, the powers that be turned to cloning. The biocreches create batches of children who are subjected to elixer from near birth and given extensive military training through simulation systems. These tank born juiced kids become elite pilots and supersoldiers.

Agenda

The Agenda of the Ouvrage program is simple, restore the cultural honor and glory of Franophone heritage, as well as bolstering the EuroZone military. This is intended as a counter to the growing economic influence of the Hanseatic League, which they see as a rebirth of Germany, and the subsequent rebirth of the Franco-German hostilities that have dominated the continent for centuries.

Leadership and Membership

The commander of the Ouvrage is the Contract General, a hired mercenary position. The Contract General is in charge of the military operations of the ouvrage and is typically a seasoned member of the Carolinian Foreign Legion. The Contract General has a cadre of operational staff and specialists who oversee the operations of the mobile citadel that is the ouvrage. These are in tern served by the lesser officers and enlisted soldiers who form the ouvrage military force. Each ouvrage represents a mobile mechanized armor regiment. The number of soldiers present is actually dependent on what sort of equipment the ouvrage is equipped with, and infantry ouvrages have much larger populations than mecha or orb ouvrages.

Aerospace - uncommon in use, aerospace ouvrages are large and slow moving aerodromes. They have flat tops, and blur the line between aircraft carrier and terrestrial fortress. These tend to be used strategically, and allow for short to intermediate range aerospace and conventional craft to provide quick and close air support. Firepower is typically concentrated in anti-air missiles and beam weapons. These also tend to be heavily involved in intelligence operations, and accordingly have sizeable intelligence assets and facilities.

Orb - The cutting edge of Carolinian weaponry, Orb Ouvrages house between three and twelve orb craft, giving them firepower on par with a naval task force. The New Hanseatic League is one of the groups that pioneered Orb craft, but theirs started as semi-autonomous turrets from their warships, and the Carolinian faction wasn't going to be left behind. While they lack the ability to build any significant number or tonnage of dedicated warship, they can match the Hanse for numbers of Orb craft and mecha built.

Mecha - the most common Ouvrage is the mobile mechadrome. The mecha ouvrage has a self contained polyforge and design center, allowing the facility to design and produce it's own internal compliment of mecha. To aid in this, the Carolinians have a core database of basic equipment and components, so most of the ouvrage mecha, regardless of what facility they come from, have a degree of material compatibility. The main effect is that each ouvrage can specialize their own forces, and as such, keep refining and improving their tech. This is fed back into the database, sharing the improvements across the Resurgence.

There are currently three major advances underway in the Resurgence, gauss technology, missile battery tech, and exotice beam tech. The Gauss initiative is working out building a variety of magnetic rail guns and specialized munitions for them, ranging from creating mecha that are little more than gauss cannons with legs, to finding out just how many rail guns a single mech can carry. The impulse behind the missile research is similar, investigating everything from swarm launchers to mech mountable anti-ship torpedoes. The exotic beam weapons has been more difficult, as rather than just lasers or plasma, the Resurgence is working heavily in arcanotech, pushing thasers, cryo-cannons, lightning generators, and hyperkinetic energy.

Power Armor - Power Armor ouvrages are the second most common after mecha, and these mobile fortresses tend to be the smallest of the series. The main reason for this is that they are the most mobile, and are used in the most aggressive fashion. The power armor they build and maintain (in the same fashion as the mecha ouvrages) take less space and resources than other military equipment.

Resources

The Carolinian Resurgence is centered around France, the old Benelux nations, Quebec Canada, and a handful of islands in the Caribbean League and nations in the AfroZone, those regions that were previously colonized by the French. This Francophone alliance has substantial financial power, cultural influence, and are a major voice inside the Atlantic Federation. This collection of wealth and influence is more than enough to cement the Resurgence and supply it with the hardware it needs. Most of the Ouvrages are built offworld, typically by Seibertronian contractors, and are shipped to Earth. The smaller ouvrages are built in Quebec Canada, along with their support equipment.