Red Mountain asteroid mining operation carved into rock

Faction dossier // RM

We didn't ask for independence. We took it.

Red Mountain Territories owns the ground from across the arena: range, pressure, and the resource-rich outer system nobody else can do without. It is the youngest of the three powers and the only one born from a refusal, a loose confederation of miners and settlers who decided they would rather fight than be owned.

The doctrine

We serve ourselves and each other

When ZHI and BC tried to carve up the asteroid mining rights between them after arrival, the workers who had actually risked their lives for those claims said no. John “Big John” MacAllister, a mining foreman, led three hundred ships and ten thousand workers out of the corporate fleet and declared independence. The rebellion succeeded for a brutal reason: both corporations needed the minerals more than they needed to make an example. Red Mountain has run on that logic ever since. The corps need us more than we need them.

// AUDIO LOG RM confirmed

MacAllister's Rebellion Speech

They called us assets. Tanaka's contracts said we belonged to the fleet. Vasquez's research teams said we existed to support their work. } Three hundred ships. Ten thousand workers who'd had enough. } We didn't ask for independence - we took it. And when they came to take it back, we showed them what happens when you corner people with nothing left to lose. } The Borderlands exist because we chose to fight rather than serve. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

The culture that grew from that is plain and unsentimental. ZHI workers serve contracts, BC researchers serve ideas, and RM serves the work itself, the kind that kills you if you stop paying attention.

// AUDIO LOG RM confirmed

Territorial Philosophy, Anonymous Miner

You want to understand RM? Put on a suit. Walk into vacuum. Drill rock until your hands bleed. } That's us. We don't have Tanaka's factories or Vasquez's theories. We have work. Hard work. Honest work. } ZHI workers serve contracts. BC researchers serve ideas. We serve ourselves and each other. } That's the difference. That's everything. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

The wound

The shaft they sealed, and the name they won’t give

MacAllister died in 2201, officially in an industrial accident. Red Mountain does not believe it. He was alone when the shaft collapsed, his escort gone, the rock failing precisely where he stood, and somewhere in a ZHI boardroom or a BC archive someone knows who gave the order. He had been surveying Shaft 7-K when he died, and whatever he found there was sealed and has stayed sealed for a decade of access requests, all denied as “not relevant to current operations.” The Territories remember. They always remember.

The home

Cluster Seven, and the ones who didn’t make it

RM has no capital and no central authority, only Cluster Seven: seven asteroids carved into a home of 1.4 million, governed by territorial council and held together by elected leaders like Governor Jaxon Cole, who still runs mining equipment every month and lost three fingers to the work he refuses to stop doing. On Asteroid One a corridor is carved with sixteen names, the workers killed before ZHI agreed to talk. Big John added his own name to the end years before he died, wanting to be among his people when they finally came for him. Fresh flowers appear every week. Nobody admits to leaving them.

When the corps push too hard, the answer comes from the floor. The 2409 Sector 9 Strike, led by foreman Sarah Hayes, shut down 40% of rare earth production and survived two assassination attempts to do it.

// CORPORATE MEMO RM confirmed

Sector 9 Solidarity Declaration

RM TERRITORIAL COUNCIL - OFFICIAL STATEMENT } Subject: Sector 9 labor action } MacAllister principle: The corps need us more than we need them. } Facts: Every ship uses our metal. Every station burns our fuel. } They pretend we're dependent. The contracts say otherwise. }

RECOVERED FRAGMENT

In the arena

How RM fights

Red Mountain fights the way it mines: from range, with pressure, with tools repurposed into weapons. Its house frame, the Olympus Mons, is an artillery platform that owns the ground from across the arena and dares the other factions to close the distance. RM’s heaviest ordnance carries the history of the rebellion in its names, the deterrents Big John left behind for when diplomacy fails and treaties break, the weapons that cracked moons during the Arrival Wars. On the field it shows up red and patient, holding the whole arena at arm’s length.

// IN-GAME CODEX These are surface readings. The recovered fragments, audio logs, corporate memos, sealed research, live in the game. Explore them in the Codex ›

The war this world describes is on right now.

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