Jack of Harts

Old California was particularly rife with Sanctuaries before the Second Great Depression hit, and they had spread throughout every State in the decades since their inception. They were places people could go to in order to find relief from a law they didn’t like, usually due to political, economic, or religious issues. They actually had much in common with the Mormon, Amish, and Indian communities that we have right now, a place where life was different than elsewhere. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. It depended on the Sanctuary in question. They represented a major dividing line or crack in American politics and culture, and they formalized the split between many of the cultures that had once seen America as a single melting pot. The Second Great Depression saw the long simmering mutual distrust enflamed by decades of political rhetoric finally boil over. The distinctly American red and blue line left them unwilling to live with each other, and many States simply split up along county, city, or individual farm lines. The Sanctuaries proved central to many of these splits. Some of them died. Others thrived, and it was their representatives that went to the States and the Feds in time to reform the government under more…rational rules.

When the American States came together to reform the Federal Government during the Second Great Depression, they had a few things to say about their thoughts on the role of said government. Very few of them included words like “more centralized power.” They also had a few things to say about the various big city types that had come to trouble all over America. In the same way that they did not want the Federal Government controlling the States, the State representatives did not want the big cities ruling the counties. So one of the first things they did was change the New States Clause of the Constitution to allow for breakaway States to join the Union without the approval of their State government. Or to eject a region they did not wish to share their State with anymore. You may gather that caused a rather massive change in how Statehood operated in the reformed United States of America.

Like the Federal armed services, State Marine Corps tended to be the busiest of the various State armed forces in Jack’s childhood. While in a state of peace or brushfire wars at worst, it was the smaller units that saw the most action, and the Marines were trained to go anywhere and do anything fast. They weren’t always the best force to send into action, but they were often the closest force available and capable of deploying to a threat. Like some State Armies, they fielded everything from individual grunts, to tanks, mechs, and even aerospace fighters and bombers. Space-capable descendents of the old Osprey were another favorite of the Marines, allowing them to deploy individual Marine units to any destination on Earth and beyond. They could rendezvous with ships in orbit, or drop Marines directly into a combat situation while filling the battlefield with explosive projectiles, laser pulses, or missile fire to suppress enemy defenses. The State Marine Corps were the most experienced military commands when The War began, and they took part in every major American Army, Space Force, or Navy deployment. They didn’t bring the most amount of firepower, the greatest expertise, or even the most bodies, to every single situation or battle, but State Marines were present and accounted for in every single major battle of the entire War.