Jack of Harts

The delegates to the Convention of States crippled the Federal government sufficiently enough that it would never threaten the United States of America again before returning home to the smaller alliances of States that had survived the Second Great Depression together. The New England Federation, the Republics of California and Texas, the Confederation of Dixie, and Pacifica. Each alliance of States survived in their own ways to become home to a different aspect of the America that was. But they did not trust each other. It was after all their very differences of opinions and refusals to work together that caused the Second Great Depression in the first place. It took far more than the end of the world as they knew it to change that.

We completed a Pathfinder campaign last night. It is a campaign of several modules I understand, and we just finished the first one. The campaign very much encourages us not to be murder hobos. We get higher rewards for bringing bounties in alive, and for finding allies along the way. Encouraged by rewards to find the right items and to give the right items away. In short, nice people get maximum rewards assuming you can be both nice and survive. But for being nice, you get allies. In the end, when it came to the three penultimate encounters of the campaign, we had gathered the right allies to make fights that would have been far more difficult go off like clockwork. Not entirely uninterrupted you understand. Enemy fireballs do bad things when we are too low level to respond. But we worked together and we survived. The necromancer is dead. The demon dog sent back to the chaos realm. We hold the deed to a fortress and control of an ancient elven gate. And our allies and the nearby town love us. We have done well, and for that we are very happy. I love it when a plan comes together.

The Convention of States reiterated that the Federal government’s primary job was to protect America from foreign adversaries and represent the various States to foreign powers. They abolished most Federal agencies, and specifically declared those that remained subordinate to State and local agencies when acting in their territory. And in one of the more interesting changes, they altered the Constitution to allow inter-State compacts. This legalized the effective alliances of States that had banded together to survive the Second Great Depression when the Federal government collapsed. The States were not willing to give up their newfound power and wanted to make certain that the Federal government would never get too big for its britches again.