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The History of Northern Gun

I have on several occasions worked directly for Maxwell Franklin. He is an amazing man with a keen insight. He obviously knows talent when he sees it, and I have had the good fortune to become one of his preferred operatives in all things concerning the duplicitous Black Market. He is aware of my problems in Lazlo and has encouraged my scholarly tendencies by feeding me tidbits of the past whenever we meet.

Damn him. For all of my self described wit and immunity to manipulation, I have fallen into his innocent but clever trap. He feels that giving Ishpeming's history the "Erin Tarn treatment", as he so eloquently puts it, would help to raise Ishpeming from a merc and manufacturing town to a place of history and learning. I doubt it, but he knows that my writing would serve as a means to re-enter Lazlo's upper crust and live the life I was intended to live. That dear old man amazes me every time I think of it. It seems I have no choice but to accept employment with him yet again.

You see, of all the things Maxwell Franklin found in Ishpeming, perhaps the single most significant thing for him to come across was a mid-sized office, on one of the first sub-levels of what was quickly dubbed HQ. During the Golden Age, the building sitting at the very heart of Ishpeming served as the corporate headquarters of a manufacturing giant known as Sentinel Industries. Its central tower stretched towards the sky with an eagerness unmatched by the concentric rings of towers surrounding it. When the apocalypse engulfed the world, a faction of militant civilians calling themselves the Northern Gun Militia made the central building their headquarters.

The office that Franklin discovered had apparently been used by the leader of the militia as an informal resting area where he kept his daily logs. Franklin spent hours poring over the video logs and audio recordings. There were stacks of documents and personal journals that had been handwritten in the same clean script and dated both before coming to the Ishpeming complex, and long after, when the video disks had become an important enough commodity to resume writing the logs by hand.

They spanned years.

I was never able to view them all myself, but I have had several conversations with Mr. Franklin on the subject, often over a bottle of his favorite Mackinac Black Bourbon. He has spent far more hours with the history than I have spent listening to him recount it, and I hope to one day be able to view it at my leisure. He has hinted that I may be of service to him sometime soon, and that if that is what I wish to receive as payment, he would grant it. Certainly, it could prove to be a piece of my complex re-admittance to the casual elite of my home city of Lazlo.

From what I have gathered through our discussions, Upper Michigan was once home to both a large association of manufacturing companies and a branch of military personnel referred to as NEMA. The two groups apparently had a working arrangement in which NEMA provided testing for the goods created by the manufacturers. The primary member of the association was Sentinel Industries, which incidentally, was the source of the name for the Ishpeming Defense Force's exclusive cyborg series. When the cataclysm struck the world, the group known as the Northern Gun Militia aided NEMA in establishing a safe haven for survivors amidst the sprawling industrial complexes at Ishpeming.

As Mr. Franklin explains it, the NEMA forces and the militia forces had a strained relationship, and it was only after several long range reconnaissance and rescue missions depleted the numbers of NEMA personnel that the remainder of them were absorbed by the militia. This took place some time in the first or second year after the apocalypse. Franklin relates that from what he can tell from the logs of the militia commander, he was a competent man who genuinely cared for those in his charge. He tried diligently to make sense of the Chaos around him and made an effort to catalog the strange and unusual new inhabitants of the world as best he could, but given the times, he obviously made several errors that we today would consider elementary.

At some point several years after the cataclysm, a disease of alien origin wreaked havoc on the populace of the region. For several months, the squads of men and women who were assigned the task of salvaging usable wreckage were warned away, fearing that they too would be affected by the mild mutagens racing through the populace. The disease was slowly brought under control, but in its wake came a new threat. The Demon Plagues had begun and had finally struck Ishpeming at its weakest hour. Even if the several squads of salvagers had been present to help fight the battle, it would hardly have been enough. Franklin believes that the inhabitants of the Northern Gun Protectorate, as it came to be called, were extremely close to seeing the end of the first Demon Plague, but were overwhelmed by a powerful demon who led an organized army of hell-spawned creatures in a campaign of destruction that stormed over Ishpeming like a steamroller. Had the beast known what lay under its feet, it would have certainly destroyed it all, taking great satisfaction in knowing what it would have taken from the world. Thankfully it was oblivious to the importance of the complex, leaving only the mindless stragglers of it's horde to nest in the ruins and feed on the returning survivors.

In the end, a few groups escaped the devastation and fled to parts unknown, while Ishpeming fell to the monstrosities and darkness taking over the world. Precious little is known about the time between then and its discovery by Franklin's Fist several decades ago. The only thing that is known for sure is that most humans believed the region to be haunted or infested with demons. With mankind's decline into barbarism and decades of living like rats as they hid from the new denizens of the world, it comes as no surprise to find that there is evidence indicating that some group or another lived in the bowels of the complex at some time during the Dark Ages, but they obviously didn't have any understanding of or need to use the technology around them, for all was left untouched.

Lastly, I will say that there is more in Ishpeming's darkest subterranean halls than the casual visitor knows. There are technological marvels of the Golden Age that are still being studied, as well as vaults unopened and databases not accessible by our current level of understanding. There is also a darkness in Franklin's eyes, when the Mackinac Black has him fully in its grip and his bodyguards are out of earshot, when he looks me in the eye and tells me that he couldn't kill everything below Ishpeming.

     - An excerpt from the journal of Alexander Dubeau, former Lazlo dilettante

With the fall of The Northern Gun Protectorate, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan fell into the same state as much of the rest of the world. Gone were the survivors of the Golden Age and their valiant effort at establishing a bastion of humanity in an ever changing world of aliens and the supernatural. Also gone were those other-dimensional beings brought through the rifts to this world, alien to them, that had allied themselves with the fledgling kingdom in hopes of surviving and forming a place for themselves amidst the chaos taking place around them in the aftermath of the cataclysm. What was once a sprawling industrial cityscape crawling with signs of life had become a ghost town, haunted by the dreams that died there. It was in this state, as the Dark Age of the post-apocalypse world drew to a close, that a rugged band of mercenaries found the site of the former kingdom.

To truly appreciate the epic scale of the discovery of Ishpeming, and what the potential held within its dormant halls would eventually mean to the people of North America, one must be aware of the trends that were beginning to emerge during that time. Although there is some truth to the tales which tell of practitioners of magic being hunted by both human and D-Bee alike, out of fear and general mistrust, magic had still become a prevalent means of power. No one knows exactly how long the Demons of the legendary Demon Plague roamed the earth, but those who were capable of using the bountiful PPE that permeated the newly born world stood a head taller than everyone else and often abused their power in the wake of that terrible ordeal. Man had survived what was possibly the most dangerous time to be alive in the history of the world, only to have their demonic tormentors and conquerors be replaced by their own kind. Still, the world was opening up to the masses of people in the absence of the plagues. In this slightly less dangerous environment, men were given to searching and exploring the ruins that covered the land, trying to regain some of their lost knowledge. Technology, while always present, was being rediscovered slowly but surely; and with that, its use was becoming more widespread. At the dawn of the post-Dark Age world, those practitioners of magic who had been grudgingly accepted for their roles as protectors, and sometimes even rulers during those hostile times, were now being chased out of town by their more mundane contemporaries.

Three of the largest and quickly growing communities in what would become known as the Domain of Man were the kingdoms of Tolkeen, Lazlo, and the Federation of Magic. These communities, while not opposed to the use of technology, had embraced the use of magic along with its wide variety of practitioners, both human and non-human alike, as a ready source of power and protection. Technology was still an evolving aspect of society. Where magic offered the means of conjuring something from thin air, or powering a device through arcane means, technology was often hindered by its age and the lack of people proficient enough to build and repair it. The fact that large scale manufacturing was no longer a luxury to any but the largest enclaves, such as the growing city-state of Chi-Town, only served to enforce man's reliance on magic as an alternate means of empowerment.

Nevertheless, there were those groups of people that had no affinity for the arcane. Some of them embraced the development of technology because technology and those who wielded it were less unilateral than magic. Anyone could use it, which is what made it appealing. A company called Wilk’s was the first to manufacture military grade weapons on a large scale, and sell them on the open market. And people would do anything for one of those sleek, reliable weapons! In no time, there were a handful of groups trying to either copy and reproduce the Wilk’s laser technology or find some of their own. But the advent of a successful new company wasn't enough to even the playing field between practitioners of magic and wielders of technology. Simply put: magic was a large part of everyone's reality, while truly high technology was so uncommon as to be mythical to some.

As the years yawned by and societies formed in the post-Dark Age, a great demand for mercenary soldiers and protectors had grown, as inevitably, the numbers of raiders and bandits grew. Many folks, human and D-Bee alike, rose to the occasion. Although the Coalition States has been a lightning rod for human supremacy since its inception, humans and D-Bee's often worked side by side after having spent the last few hundred years together in terror of the monstrosities roaming the land. Together they had developed the means to attack and defend against the rift-spawned creatures of the world, and using that knowledge to organize themselves as units of warriors, they spread across the land trying to earn their way.

One such group of mercenaries was a group known as Franklin's Fist. In their infancy, the group had performed small protection jobs and occasionally raided a few bandit camps themselves. The Robin Hood of the modern world, Maxwell Franklin had always tried to help the people he worked for, so they might better protect themselves when he moved on. As often as not, he would pass their way again sometime later to find them gone. Sometimes the signs told of a mass move; other times their demise was more obvious. More often than not, he found himself and his men scavenging materials to get by between jobs. It was on a mission as the mercenary escort to a scavenging expedition that Franklin met the woman he would move the world for.

Franklin had hired on with a small group known as The Society for Recollective Thought. Their most basic and sacred tenet was the notion that only through reclaiming the past could the people of the world could regain order, and the means of advancement necessary to live in a society worthy of peace. To this end, they had hired several small mercenary groups to escort them on their various expeditions. Franklin's Fist had the good fortune of being attached to Anne Gedry. Anne was an odd fusion of scholar and technician, highly charismatic and fiercely independent. Anne had been meticulously refurbishing some ancient bit of technology that she had traded for when Franklin met her. As they talked, she explained to him that the world was once rife with the facilities to mass-produce technology of all kinds. That, she said, would be the most valuable discovery of their age: the means to bring mankind back from the bottom of the food chain. She struck a chord in Franklin, one that would resonate in him throughout the rest of his life.

After two years of working scavenger jobs for The Society, Franklin grew tired of the leadership of The Society. They had begun to hoard whatever technology came to them and were beginning to manifest some disturbing trends among the resident scholars and techs. Their group was becoming less like a society that wanted to see mankind rise from the ashes and more like a religious institution that wanted to be the saviors of the world. Several of their field Operators were slow to see this change as they spent very little time at the home base, but once it became noticeable, many of them left. Franklin struck out for new horizons with Anne in tow.

After two years of scavenging on their own, Franklin and Anne hit pay dirt. They were recovering parts from a half destroyed power plant south of Old Detroit, near the area that was once the border between the old states of Michigan and Ohio. While taking cover from a firefight in the backseat of a pre-Rifts vehicle hulk, Anne found the remains of a man that had lain undisturbed since the Cataclysm shook the world. The corpse sat behind the wheel of the car, one hand holding a revolver, the other holding a faded picture of a human woman and two small children. The scene was saddening to Anne until she noticed the faded badge on the man's chest. It read: David Samson, Engineering and Development Dept. Looking around the interior of the vehicle, she noticed a silver briefcase on the front passenger seat. Suddenly, the beaten hulk seemed more like a crypt as the sound of the battle outside gave way to her mind racing through the possibilities of what lay in the briefcase. Carefully defeating the lock with her Vibro-Blade, Anne found a series of files regarding some technical process that she was unfamiliar with. Also scattered across the top of the files was a handful of brochures describing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the area around Ishpeming. Clipped to a file that read Resume was a map with a set of directions to Sentinel Industries in Ishpeming. Anne was breathless as she crawled out of the sacred hulk to find Franklin and plan for their future.

Since the group was already in Michigan, the decision was made to forge ahead. Legend held that Michigan was one of the deadliest places in America, but the prospect of discovering a manufacturing marvel such as the one described in the brochures was one that the group collectively agreed was worth the risk.

It took the group three months to reach the Upper Peninsula from the day they found the map. Lead by a wild Psi-Stalker, they came by way of Wisconsin, skirting along the southern border of Michigan to the old state of Wisconsin, where they could proceed north in a relatively safer environment. The terrain was more rugged then, with debris and nature covering what remained of the old American roadways that are said to have connected every city on the continent. Ironically, their trip north aboard vehicles that operated on old technology, in search of a place that could potentially bring that same technology back into the world, was frustrating in it's own way. The group suffered through periodic breakdowns and long hours of jury-rigging their systems to continue their search. They had endured a number of skirmishes with wild beasts and raiders, as well as their own share of infighting over how to divide whatever spoils they would find. Franklin had done a good job of surrounding himself with like-minded people; the majority of them saw the big picture. They knew that the end result of this mission could potentially provide bigger dividends for both their wallets and their conscience. A handful of dissenters went on patrols and didn't return.

Had the people of the post cataclysm world followed the old calendar, the date would have read: October 4th, 2258. However, not having any accurate recollection of the Golden Age of Man, much less of its calendar, the group moved forward into the pristine wilderness of Upper Michigan unaware: that very day was to be an historic occasion, and one that would warrant remembrance by scholars in the years to come.

Judging by the map, pre-Rifts Ishpeming and the surrounding communities had sprawled across the western Upper Peninsula all the way to Wisconsin. As they made their way across the countryside, the group noticed that there were a remarkable number of old buildings and structures that had remained intact, albeit abandoned, for what appeared to be many years. Signs warning them to turn back were painted on the weathered facades of some of them, and the mournful sound of the wind lent an eerie feel to the area. From a distance they could make out the silhouette of the cityscape. Cautiously, they passed through the battered and broken outer walls of what appeared to be the outermost perimeter community of Ishpeming proper. Shattered by the waves of demons and supernatural horrors that scoured the earth in mankind's most dismal hour, the exhaust stacks jutting from the cavernous factories scratched the sky. A large thoroughfare led them into the city, to a set of steel gates that lay askew beneath a sign that read Northern Gun Protectorate HQ. The group would call this place home while they spent the next few years discreetly gathering their associates and determining the functionality of the labyrinthine complexes. Ishpeming, and more importantly the legacy of Northern Gun, had been discovered.

The first several hours after discovering the remains of Ishpeming were spent in controlled enthusiasm. Anne desperately wanted to begin hunting for artifacts and cataloging the discovery, but the sounds of scurrying and skulking creatures in the darkness of the buildings and factories that they passed quickly tamed her excitement. Maxwell Franklin had successfully supported his mercs for several years and held each of them in high regard. As a good leader, he valued his men as well as his assets, and made certain to successfully reconnoiter the area and establish a base camp from which to search the city.

As anticipated, the ruined city was more than they had imagined during their many wistful conversations during the long trek north through the hazardous wilderness. Although the city had obviously been the focal point of a tremendous battle, the remains of its defenders had scarcely been moved from the places where they fell, much less picked over by salvager's. The shredded hulks of robots and abandoned vehicles lay sprawled atop the debris, clogging the roadways. At one point, as the group carefully picked their way through the rubble, a techie in Franklin's troop accessed a video feed from one of the fallen robots with a remote power supply. Frozen in place by their glimpse of the past, they stood transfixed in the blue light of a small view screen and watched several minutes of the battle before witnessing the attack that peeled open this pilot's compartment and removed the heroic soldier from it. A twenty foot tall creature that would come to be known as a Horror in the years to come, charged headlong into the robot, knocking it prone before leaping atop it and rending its armor with its wickedly curved claws. It was a grisly scene. The worst part of the feed was the revelation that came with the video: demons had destroyed Ishpeming and the group known as The Northern Gun.

News of big discoveries spreads quickly, and Franklin knew that he would have to secure the area as quickly as possible and be prepared to defend his claim if it became necessary. Quite often, if a novice explorer made use of an experienced guide and made an important discovery, the guide would simply sell the location to a wealthier salvager who would in turn swarm the claim with his own people. Thankfully, Franklin wasn't a novice and his Psi-Stalker scout, Corrin, wasn't as morally corrupt as some of the greedy robber-scholars and their tainted guides. Franklin had once been told that the ambient levels of the energy used to power magic, the same energy which was so alluring to the supernatural, had dropped a great deal since the time of the cataclysm. Although still strong, he suspected it was unlikely that there were any such creatures still remaining in the energy deficient zone of the Upper Peninsula. Prudence, however, has always been one of the hallmarks of a good leader, and so, after the first few days of clearing the area and a handful of encounters with deeply entrenched nests of supernatural monsters, Franklin elected to send Corrin to hire a group of Psi-Stalkers that they had camped for a few days with in Wisconsin. The deal he offered was simple: Aid his men in clearing the city of the supernatural denizens and temporarily patrol the surrounding countryside in exchange for any equipment he could supply to aid in their task, and a long term contract with his group, should they be interested in such a deal. It was a generous offer for the times, but needless to say, the mere thought of such a challenging hunt intoxicated the Psi-Stalkers, who came readily and performed with admirable zeal.

Franklin's Fist, with numbers greatly bolstered by the Psi-Stalkers, systematically cleared and secured the outlying communities, methodically making their way towards Ishpeming proper and their most powerful adversaries. Within a month, Franklin's Fist had killed or routed all of the inhabitants of the ruins. The Psi-Stalkers took to their patrols and hunted the stragglers down while the rest of the group began to take stock of their surroundings. Anne sent word to a few of her more technically inclined friends and former members of The Society for Recollective Thought, asking them to come and assist her in ascertaining the viability of the technology they found. On the surface, much of it was battered and broken during the final hours of the city, the remainder being somewhat weathered by time and the elements. The real discovery came when the group forced their way into one of the sealed underground complexes!

They knew from reading the brochures found in the briefcase that "historical" Ishpeming had it's beginning in the mining industry, so it was no surprise to them that several of the factories had below ground levels. What staggered them was the cavernous size of some of them and the remarkable condition of the equipment therein. They had expected to find much of it in disrepair. Instead, what they found was machinery and equipment that had been faithfully and conscientiously maintained by a group of men and women that were forced to treat it as though each piece was the last of its kind. In the maintenance offices, they found meticulously kept logbooks that detailed the various changes made to the equipment to keep it operational, or to change its functionality. Any removed or altered parts were stored away and labeled in the event that materials could be made to return the piece to its original intent. It was a treasure trove of the most priceless knowledge they had ever heard of, and to find it in such a quantity was enough to make their heads swim with the possibilities. Anne was beside herself with joy to see that someone had so carefully recorded even the most minute details regarding the equipment.

However, Franklin was very practical and not given to count his dragons before they hatched. He detailed teams of men to follow the paper trails to the storehouses and see what was actually left. More often than not, they found that certain warehouses had been destroyed and the parts needed to return some of the machinery to Golden Age standards simply weren't there. Many buildings had been looted by unscrupulous employees during the cataclysm in hopes of riding out the storm and setting themselves up somewhere later, only to be lost in the destruction of the time. Others had simply been ruined by time. In the early days, much of what was found was reluctantly set aside in an effort to concentrate on what they could figure out. Their goal was to bring a factory up to production level as quickly as they realistically could. Anne and her crew of Operators and techies mulled it over and came up with a possible one year timetable for one of the weapon assembly lines to come up to production level. The line had seen service in the latter days of the complexes inhabitants, some of the materials were readily on hand, and it was one that had several design variations already logged into its system.

One year doesn't seem like a lot of time to perform such a task. It was even seen as perhaps too optimistic an estimate by a few of the crew, but Anne assured the group that one year was a realistic timetable for them. Franklin was glad to hear the news as well. It had become increasingly more important to come up with at least some sort of timeline to offer the mercenaries under him, who would be working on faith, room, and board until the place began turning a profit. One year seemed like a long time, but it was acceptable given the work that lay ahead. In fact, he told them, it had to be. The remoteness and inherent solitude of the Upper Peninsula could only harbor a secret of such magnitude for so long. Eventually, when word of the discovery got around, others would come looking for a piece of the action and possibly try to stake a claim to the find. In a preemptive strike, Franklin hired several small mercenary groups that he had become acquainted with over the years to perform the various security details he required. He and Anne also discreetly hired several more Operators to recover and rehabilitate the systems in the various factories. To ensure their loyalty, he promised them a portion of the profits and an opportunity to serve in various important capacities when the complexes were up and running. It was an exciting time. The opportunities offered by Franklin were more than most of his company had ever been given before. It was generous. He needed them and they were grateful to be needed. To play a part in man's technological rise from the ashes and near barbarism of the previous generations was an honor he had given to them when most tech hunters were seeking glory and riches only for themselves. It was a time of hope, and the future of the post-Dark Age world finally shone with a hint of a glimmer on the horizon.

With the tumult of industry came the ever present specter of society. Workers brought their families, who brought their own needs, which brought people that could make a living catering to those needs. Within months Franklin witnessed Ishpeming begin the slow transition from ghost town to bustling frontier town. Although he was slightly annoyed at first by the distraction, he eventually came to see that there was in fact some merit to the process. Although premature, the influx of people proved useful in cleaning up parts of Ishpeming and the outlying areas that he himself had placed low on the priority list. Outside of the industrial parks there were whole neighborhoods beginning to take shape. Small merchants catered to the slowly growing populace, and every week more people arrived to seek employment or opportunity. Within the complexes themselves, Franklin was discovering new needs for manpower as gallery upon gallery was opened to reveal everything from long trapped packs of ravenous ghouls to dangerously flooded corridors and shafts. All of the damaged materials had to be hauled out and inspected by the techs to retrieve what was salvageable. The rest was used to barter for services with those new arrivals that Franklin couldn't take on right away.

Although Maxwell Franklin was openly recognized as the de facto leader of operations in Ishpeming, there were several other people that played an important role in the establishment of what is now the largest independent manufacturer in North America, as well as in the development of the city of Ishpeming. Most notable among them is Anne Gedry, the woman who shared Franklin's dream of empowering the common man through technology. While Franklin and his team used what technology they had to serve as mercenaries, usually in the role of protectors, he had no real way of bringing technology into the mainstream. If he had made the discovery alone, he would have been at the mercy of the more tech savvy of the world. Anne brought to their relationship a genuine desire to see the same dream come to fruition, along with the practical knowledge necessary to see that they had firm control of seeing it done properly. They did, however have to rely on others to help them in their gargantuan task. To that end, they kept notes on the personnel working with them and decided who was best suited to each role to be filled in the forthcoming company; for that was essentially the only way to make their dream actually work. They would have to form a company and produce on a large scale. And to be solvent, they would have to sell themselves as well as their product to the masses. With so much technical work to be done, Anne graciously left the front man's role to Franklin.

Unfortunately, there were those people who sought to steal away a piece of the tech that would allow them to make their own way in the world without relying on the generosity of someone like Franklin. Franklin knew that he couldn't hope to contain the enterprising people working for him. Greed was a powerful motivator to those who had lived without anything to call their own. He was forced to institute ruthlessly efficient measures to deal with would be thieves. Surprisingly, most people didn't want to see a good thing ruined and wholeheartedly supported his efforts. Not surprisingly there were also those people that made every effort to insinuate themselves into his confidences or gain his ear, but Franklin was no fool. He judged every man on his own merit and how useful he could be to the successful realization of his dream. Those whom he deemed unnecessary or of little help to his cause were put in positions to be of service in establishing some form of government for Ishpeming. Naturally, the sycophants among them made sure that Ishpeming and Northern Gun would grow together and that any legislation to be passed would be favorable to the industry that would eventually prove to be their life's blood. In exchange, Northern Gun would maintain a dedicated group tasked with reestablishing civilian commodities as well as military tech. The deal proved to cement the symbiotic relationship of Ishpeming and Northern Gun to such an extent that many people don't really realize that they are two separate entities.

Although, slightly behind his self imposed one year deadline, Maxwell Franklin officially opened Northern Gun one year and five months from the day he laid eyes on the sign of the Northern Gun Protectorate and watched the heroics of that group on centuries old video recordings amidst the ruined hulks of robots and power armor. Appropriately, he named the new company Northern Gun in honor of the soldiers whose bones his fortune now laid upon. He raised the first Northern Gun energy rifle over his head that day amidst tumultuous applause.

As elated as they were to see a finished product finally come off of the assembly line, the folks at Northern Gun knew that the real work was just beginning. Alliances had been made and promises needed to be kept in order to maintain some semblance of order amidst the excitement that permeated the town of Ishpeming. Even before workers had put the first NG-33 into a crate, work had been running around the clock for almost sixteen months. Many of the assembly lines had been scavenged from to maintain others, and reassembling them in their proper working order was a herculean task in and of itself. Prioritizing the list of items to be put into production fell to Franklin, who had fallen unceremoniously from the position of Mercenary Commander to Administrator. Naturally, he placed weapons and armor at the very top of the list. He intended to allay the worries of the several mercenary groups he held on retainer by providing them with brand spanking new equipment to appease them while he worked out some system by which he could pay them properly. In the meantime, he pointed to the workers that swarmed over the vehicle and power armor lines like busy worker bees as incentive to trust him a little longer.

Franklin knew that the company would prove to be successful by providing the items in demand, which at the time were weapons and equipment to survive life in the dangerous world outside. The problem was that in the dangerous world outside, the vast majority of people still utilized a system of trade and barter. Only those living near one of the established city states or a larger kingdom could really produce any kind of currency, and there was little chance that one currency would be valid in another kingdom. While the city of Ishpeming busied itself with growing slowly into a kingdom of its own, Franklin made overtures to a handful of merchants that had set up shop in Ishpeming, with the intention of hiring them to work as traveling salesmen.

In those days, there were a number of people, human and D-Bee alike, that made a living by traveling the countryside scavenging and selling goods and materials to those folks who couldn't afford to do so themselves. For the most part, they had the lay of the land, and knew where to go to sell the really good finds. By organizing them, Franklin was initially able to get his wares to those places most likely to be able to afford them. His instructions were to make every effort to trade in certain commodities, which he designated, wherever there was no translatable currency. In places with their own established currency, he instructed them to look for a suitable place to set up shop and take an inventory of what the area needed the most. For protection, he sent a small contingent of mercs with them, but naturally some of them ditched their guards and never returned, thinking that they would simply sell what they had and live comfortably in relative obscurity. Most of them were eventually found and dealt with, but those that did return came back with long lists of items desired by the common people, as well as items and equipment desired by the various kingdoms they visited. Many of them also brought with them letters of intent from the rulers of a few of those kingdoms, stating their willingness to trade in the various commodities listed on Franklin's wish list in exchange for finished products. One of the kingdoms even sent an emissary to Ishpeming with the offer of helping Franklin to set up a banking system to better control his developing company. Franklin brought this good news to his newly constructed panel of advisors and councilors as proof of the viability of their endeavor.

In spite of the promising news, several of the people working in the Northern Gun industrial complex were dissatisfied with their lot. As is often the case when you have a burgeoning new group, some folks thought that they could do a better job of managing the operations of the company. When news of another industrial zone to the south of Ishpeming leaked from within one of the mercenary companies, several of them, along with some disgruntled technicians and the explorers that had discovered it, left to seek their own fortunes there. Franklin had known about the site, but had chosen to concentrate his efforts on one site at a time. Being the larger of the two, and the one better equipped to produce weapons in the most expedient fashion, he chose to focus on Ishpeming and leave the area near Escanaba alone for the time being. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the group would fail. Unbeknownst to those that had left, Anne had sent raiding parties to scavenge many of the items needed for the Ishpeming factories from this other site. It would be a long time before they were in a position to compete with Northern Gun on the same scale.

After a few years, Ishpeming was on the map. Northern Gun had successfully made its name known among many of the kingdoms in the Domain of Man. They had successfully begun selling a few of "their own" weapons, which were obviously Golden Age product designs, or as near as they were able to produce, as well as a few items that they had reverse engineered and knocked off from various sources such as Wilk's and Chi-Town. They had also started production of various sundries and creature comforts that would be a mainstay of their production. There was a steady flow of scholars and other various learned men and women coming to Ishpeming to see what life was like in the place that was bringing civilization back to the lands. The brain trust at Northern Gun grew so that every day was seeing a new idea or proposal that would revolutionize the industry. The designers and idea men were broken down into teams according to what their designs intended: vehicles, power armor, robots, weapons, or equipment. And to top it all off, there was a banking system in it's infancy in Ishpeming, using the Northern Gun Credit. Many of the mercenary companies still worked on the company store policy, having seen credit systems come and go, and would remain that way for years to come. But a great deal more of them bought into the system whole heartedly, spreading the idea around as they traveled the countryside. Soon, in nearly every city in the Domain of Man, one could find a vendor accepting the NG Credit.

After five years, the group that had abandoned Northern Gun to start fresh in their own venture finally opened the doors on their own company called Wellington Industries. The company was situated in the town of Wellington, in the Manistique Imperium, the kingdom that had grown as an offshoot of Ishpeming near Lake Michigan. For years, it had toiled away at trying to bring its own factories up to production level, competing for the commodities that Northern Gun was reaping daily. With little to offer in trade, it took them longer to get up and running, and only after brokering deals with Northern Gun to produce equipment for Ishpeming first. As Northern Gun grew, the people of the Manistique Imperium watched with thinly veiled jealousy as NG climbed to the top of the Robotics ladder. During the Golden Age, its factories had also been a part of the Ishpeming Manufacturers Association. Unfortunately, most of their facilities were tooled to produce heavy equipment for construction and agriculture, and weapon systems for vehicles. Any means of producing robotics had been scavenged to fit the facilities of Northern Gun. Even when they had their facilities up and running, production was slow compared to the smoke belching factories to the north. Two truths hit the leaders of the Manistique Imperium hard: First, the bulk of their current products were great for an expanding kingdom, but kingdoms generally only expand when they are secure. And second, many of those kingdoms wouldn't be secure until they spent their money with Northern Gun. Thus, it took some time for the Manistique Imperium to really start churning out merchandise. With Northern Gun now living next door to a competitor, they brokered a deal to share vehicle systems technology with each other. The benefit of this was an exchange of information as well as personnel, which was the perfect scenario for the reintroduction of industrial espionage into the post-cataclysm world. One would keep tabs on the other and vice versa, with Northern Gun trying to retain the upper hand and the Manistique Imperium looking for a way out from under Northern Gun's shadow.

The balancing factor was finally introduced when the Manistique Imperium was invited to attach itself to the NG credit system. Ostensibly, this seemed like the logical thing to do since both parties were well known manufacturing companies whose combined strength of production could better serve to back the value of the credit. However, there was an underlying motive for the power brokers that had surrounded Franklin. They felt that since Northern Gun was the larger producer of goods in demand and had supported the credit for so long alone, it should be the majority leader in the endeavor. Outwardly, this seemed fair, but the leaders in Manistique knew that it was one more way for Northern Gun to hold the upper hand. Still, the benefit to such an arrangement held more appeal than not having it, and the Manistique Imperium reluctantly agreed.

Over the years, the deal has paid off. Northern Gun and Ishpeming have grown exponentially, and so has the Manistique Imperium. Wellington Industries has even contracted some of their designs to be installed in Northern Gun vehicles and some of their wares are showcased in Northern Gun showrooms. There is a brisk trade between the two neighbors and an unofficial stance of mutual defense and non-military aggression. There is still a fair amount of tension between the two powers over both their history and the very real practice of industrial espionage. New ideas come to the Ishpeming Bazaar every year and potential sellers are mysteriously whisked away by unknown assailants, presumably to a rival manufacturer like Bandito Arms or Wellington.

Through all the years, one person has stood by and watched his dream come to life in stark clarity. Maxwell Franklin has lived two lifetimes worth of adventure, both on the battlefield and in the boardroom. In each capacity, he has been forced to make the hard decisions that have proved to guide his company to its current position. He was wise enough to know that Northern Gun's growth and survivability was safer in the hands of a small group of like minded people. His board of directors has seen him live long past his prime, and no longer plan for what will transpire in the event of his passing. He is as much a part of the day to day operation of Northern Gun as the electricity in the complex, thanks to excellent cybernetic implants and bio-systems, and a seemingly unnatural long lifespan. His only regret is that Anne Gedry is no longer with him to share in the realization of their mutual dream. Where she went, no one but Franklin knows, but if she were here to see what has become of the ruined city of Ishpeming and its hollow heart, she would be proud.

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