Nobody fights alone in 2089. Every faction believes it’s right. Most of them are wrong about at least one thing. Choosing who to work with — and who to betray — is the core of Chrome & Covenant.
Player Hook: These profiles are “common knowledge dossiers” — what your character would know from living in this world. The full truth behind each faction is in the books. Some of what follows is propaganda. Figuring out which parts is part of the game.
CRB (Constitutional Resistance Bloc)
“If they can’t predict you, they can’t control you.”
Freedom fighters with IRA-inspired tactics, guarding the Lucent Ark legacy. The CRB believes in constitutional rights, open technology, and resistance to corporate control — but they disagree violently about methods, priorities, and how far the fight should go.
Structure: Semi-autonomous cells organized by region. No central command — cells cooperate but operate independently. Missions are assigned through Fixers using Jefferson-randomized mission packets that even the Fixers can’t trace or modify.
Regional Divisions: The Alamo Circuit (Texas — long-range strikes, drone swarms), Red Dirt Battalion (Oklahoma — hit-and-run, misinformation), Sunflower Command (Kansas — weather warfare), River Ghosts (Arkansas — underwater infiltration, smuggling), Liberty Front (Missouri — urban insurgency, command coordination).
Ghost Cells: The CRB’s deep-infiltration arm. Independent, rankless, operating on total autonomy. Wanderers travel city to city; Locals embed and master their turf. Callsigns are never tied to real identities. Ghost Cell operatives are some of the most dangerous people in the setting — not because of firepower, but because nobody knows they’re there until it’s too late.
Heartland: The Forgotten States. Silo 82 is the CRB stronghold. But cells operate in every region — Aurora-9, the Iron Belt, the Fallen Shore, and NSL.
Rougarou
Afro-Caribbean syndicate practicing data-Vodou and cyber-rituals. Controls the smuggling networks of the Fallen Shore. The Rougarou treat the Mesh as a living thing to be communed with, not merely exploited — technology as spiritual practice, sacred punk at its most literal.
Operations: The Rougarou runs the largest smuggling networks in the post-Disjunction world. The Sea Choir Line — floating relays disguised as prayer offerings — carries relic and data transport along the drowned coast. Cradle Port operates as a wide-open free port under Rougarou protection.
Sub-group — Boo Hags: Specialists in Wake operations, spiritual warfare, and the kinds of jobs that make even other Rougarou uncomfortable.
The tension: The Rougarou protects the drowned communities of the Fallen Shore from outside predators, but extracts heavy prices for that protection. A party might seek their help navigating the Wake, only to find themselves indebted. Or be hired for a smuggling run and discover the cargo has spiritual significance that complicates everything.
The Triads
Pragmatic criminal network dominating Aurora-9 commerce. Not ideologues — businesspeople with guns and territory.
The Big Three: Yǒngshì, Jinzhou, and Red Bamboo operate through the Guang-Xi economic framework — a shared commercial structure that lets rival families do business without open warfare. Most of the time.
Shirogane: A Yakuza presence that predates the triad structure. Operates independently, respects the Guang-Xi framework when convenient, ignores it when not. Old money, old methods, old grudges.
Aurora-9 reality: Above the domes, the Triads are the economy. Below them, the CRB runs the resistance. The space between is where most player characters operate — doing jobs for one while hiding from the other.
The Firm
“Order is profit. Clarity is power. Chaos has no value unless contained.”
Corporate enforcement syndicate. When a corporation needs something done quietly, The Firm answers. When it needs something done loudly, The Firm also answers — for a higher fee.
Principals (Tier 0): Mr. Vane (apex strategist, deploys entire divisions), Mr. Ledger (chief fiscal architect, controls kill-margin thresholds and bounty pricing), Ms. Quota (efficiency specialist who eliminates redundant variables — including people).
Command Divisions: Marginjack (financial warfare), Breakwire (sabotage), Lockstep (enforcement), Hexline (digital warfare), Voxprime (propaganda), Signalghost (intelligence), Nodeseer (surveillance), Fullstop (termination), Civic (governance infiltration), Proxy (deniable operations).
Why they matter: The Firm is the most likely antagonist for starting campaigns. They’re professional, resourced, and everywhere. But they’re also potential employers — The Firm hires independents when its own people would be recognized. Working for The Firm pays well. Crossing The Firm costs everything.
Iron Creed / Machine Priests
Theocratic machine-worship in the Iron Belt. Labor is prayer. Production quotas are religious obligations. Equipment failure is spiritual failure. Machine Priests interpret factory operations as sacred duty, and ARK-7’s presence in the region makes their conviction feel divinely endorsed.
The hierarchy: Machine Priests occupy the top of Iron Belt society. Below them, war-factory lords build weapons and armor from salvaged technology. Below that, the workers who keep the forges running — and the Cyber-Union Resistance that fights automation on their behalf.
Caught between: The Iron Creed originally sought a path between ARK-7’s judgment and M0-LiK’s hunger. That search has fractured into competing interpretations, some righteous, some corrupted, most somewhere in between.
The Thirteenth
Militant faction bound by the Code of the Ring. Extensive NPC roster and vehicle fleet. The Thirteenth operates on loyalty and oath — once you’re in, you’re in for life. They believe in something, and they will die for it. What exactly they believe varies by cell, by commander, and by which version of the Code they follow.
Additional Factions
The world is crowded with competing interests. Each of these factions has territory, methods, and reasons:
Ember Saints — Fire-worshippers in the Iron Belt who believe purification comes through flame.
Ashen Creed — Ascetic survivalists who’ve given up on technology entirely.
Coral Born — Fallen Shore community adapted to life in the drowned cities.
Bloodsmiths — Biotech artisans who modify flesh the old-fashioned way.
Sea Choir — Fallen Shore traders in memories and Wake fragments.
Dust Preachers — Forgotten States evangelists spreading Jefferson’s word (or what they think is Jefferson’s word).
Ethical Forge — Iron Belt engineers trying to continue Lucent Ark’s ethical tech philosophy.
Good Guy Network — Street-level mutual aid. Not a faction so much as a survival system.
Taíno Rebels — Aurora-9 indigenous resistance fighting identity erasure.
The Coven — Secretive group with unknown objectives and AI connections.
Red Hammer Union — Worker-militants in the Iron Belt.
Guild of Gilded Hands — Artisan faction trading in luxury goods and custom cyberware.
Book Expansion: Factions & Reputation covers 23+ factions with full mechanics — reputation tracks, mission generators, NPC rosters with stat blocks, territory maps, and the inter-faction relationship web that drives campaign-level conflict. These profiles are the 30–40% you’d know from living in the world. The book is the other 60–70%.
Continue Exploring
Learn: Regions — Where each faction operates
Learn: The AI Pantheon — Which AIs influence which factions
Play: NSL: Your First City — Where factions collide
Rules: Build Your First Operative — Choose your faction ties
Go deeper: Factions & Reputation