Novalunar Factions
It would be untruthful to characterise the Tempest as anything less than cataclysmic. Yet though that veritable apocalypse brought Novalunar humanity to its knees, it rose back up stronger than before. Nevertheless, irrevocably severed from its past, humanity forgot its mission, purpose, and unity. Powerful beyond belief, yet divided beyond reconciliation, the heirs of Novaluna One now walk their own paths, all diverging from one another. Where they cross, blood is spilt.
Hadron Corps
After the Tempest, the well-prepared military personnel of XCL-I that would become the stratocratic Hadron Corps were the first to recover and the first to rediscover their own history, though their subsequent attempts to reunify humanity were in vain. Nevertheless, with their tremendous fleet of massive airborne war vessels and bases worldwide, they remain a premier military power still chasing that vestigial directive.
Dominion of the North
Like the Hadron Corps, XCL-II was swift to reclaim its bearing and reassert itself after the Tempest. However, in bitter and cynical observation of history's new trajectory, the new Dominion of the North chose not to join the Hadron Corps in reestablishing the Mission, instead conquering and protecting its vast northern territory with its immense navy and crushing potential belligerents, all as it waits for a better age.
Deepreach
In comparison to their kin, the few survivors of XCL-III found themselves stranded in a uniquely lethal environment. Retreating deep into the mountainous jungles, the hardened soldiers of Deepreach did what they needed to for survival, fortifying themselves in impenetrable fortresses and persisting through sheer force of will. They are closed and reclusive to most besides their perennial allies, the Hadron Corps.
Wildfire Raidlands
Of all the 27 ante-Tempest colonies, none suffered a fate worse than XCL-IV; for during and after the Tempest, it was utterly annihilated. What few people remained in the wake of its destruction took to the desert, as tribal nomads scavenging ruined technology and infrastructure or bandits using their makeshift creations to pillage each other and any who stray too far into the aptly-named Wildfire Raidlands.
Exclave Vistora
Formerly the beating heart of Novaluna, those of what remained of the Exclave vowed to restore themselves to their former majesty. Yet the incomprehensibly gargantuan city Exclave Vistora mutated and metastasised into turned out far different than either of its namesakes; inconceivable in its size, it is a chaotic, lawless warren of greed and caprice, aimless and volatile yet immense in its potential for changing the world.
Regenesis Society
Prior to the Tempest, Genesis Station was a low-orbit space station constructed from the hulk of the Ad Astra, supported by XCL-VI Genesis Landing and used for a variety of habitability experiments. It remained remarkably intact and functional after the Tempest, and is now home to its similarly named governing authority, an esoteric group of inefficacious quasi-conspirators known as the Regenesis Society.
Freewater Confederation
If the form of XCL-VII Port Liber's freewheeling maritime society survived the Tempest, what little remained of its essence was warped beyond recognition. Judged collectively, the Freewater Confederation's constituents make up one of the most powerful naval thalassocracies in the world. In reality, it is but a fractious coalition of vicious pirate states that variously extort and prey upon anything sufficiently valuable.
Heart of the World
Few factions on Novaluna are as manifestly unusual as the Heart of the World; utilising its predecessor colony's pansarcid expertise and location on its eponymous pansarcid mega-colony, the people of the Heart share in common extreme and extensive biomodifications that allow them to interface with pansarcids. As a result, most of their technology and social facets are built upon advanced pansarcid biotechnology.
Angelon United
Enriched by its advanced technology and propelled by its canny leadership, the former immense quasi-conglomerate and later polity in its own right that is Angelon United fast recovered from the wreckage of its predecessor entities. Having long escaped the limited delineations of a corporation, Angelon United is nothing less than a world power, in possession of extensive orbital infrastructure and great military might.
Sunstruck Realms
Effectively born anew amidst the vast greatland plains on which XCL-XI Summereve had been established, the Sunstruck Realms adapted and developed alongside the gigantic zoomorphs inhabiting the region, taming and utilising the creatures until they were an integral part of their culture. As the Realms are otherwise a loose association of territorial quasi-tribes, these traditions serve as a powerful uniting influence.
New Moon Republic
While not the only post-Tempest polity with a fixation on historical atavism, the New Moon Republic is unique in concerning itself with the true substance of Novaluna One before the cataclysm; disillusioned with what it regards as the dystopian tendencies of other factions, the NMR styles itself as the lone paragon of the old ways, despite in truth being a weak, corrupt, and backwardsy client state dependent on its allies.
Altaterra Empire
Drawing its mandate not from Novalunar history as other factions have, but from the history of Earth, with which it has long had an obsession, the Altaterra Empire claims that progress comes from regress to the ways of old, for which it is the prime vehicle. In the name of Earth and its glory, the Empire maintains the rhetoric of aggressive imperialism, although in reality contents itself with the territorial status quo.
Oasis Mirage
Paralleling its forerunner XCL-XIII in sheer mystery and mysticism, the very presence of Oasis Mirage is difficult to place; while its existence is not in doubt, rarely have its glittering cities been seen by outsiders as more than tenuous illusions on the horizon. Using esoteric psionic technology replicated nowhere else, it exists on a parallel plane of reality readily accessible only to those acquainted with its methods.
Golden Immortals
Based primarily in orbit around Novaluna, the Golden Immortals are characterised by their strong proclivities for transhumanism, a philosophy of caste-based social purity, and a brutal apartheid society predicated on both. They chiefly inhabit their vast orbital city of Spire, and their usage of psionics and competition for orbital dominance has led to frequent conflict with the Solarian Covenant, their longstanding nemesis.
Neonymphonia
With the means to do so and few options besides, the remnants of XCL-XV Isle Nereis took to the seas, coming to inhabit increasingly gigantic, mobile, submarine habitats as the strange and divergent civilisation of Neonymphonia. Its psionic technology is incredibly advanced and inextricably linked to a powerful gestalt entity it created known as the Sympath, and its society is notably one of pacifistic hedonism.
Ash Crest Necronet
Unlike all other factions on Novaluna, the circumstances of the Ash Crest Necronet's origins remain unknown. XCL-XVII never reestablished contact after the Tempest, and for nearly a century most assumed it had perished. Yet investigation since has slowly revealed the horrifying; an impossibly immense army of cybernetic zombies controlled by a massive computer network, dormant, yet malign, growing, and preparing.
Grove Eternal
Coming to view the dense and biotically diverse tropical forests in which it originated not as full of challenges and obstacles, but assets and opportunities, the Grove Eternal
fast adapted to its environs and established a deep, indelible harmony with the jungle. Eventually coming to view nature within its bounds as sacred and everything beyond as spiritually profane, the Grove Eternal now exists in nigh-hostile isolation.
First Abyss
Acquainted better with the relative safety and solitude of the deep ocean than with the surface, those formerly of XCL-XIIX opted to rebuild their society anew in the undisturbed depths of the sea. Though not fully isolationist in its relations with the surface world, First Abyss nevertheless refuses all international interaction save for trade, transit, and migration, remaining neutral in its unthreatened position.
Citizens' Combine
Inspired by prognostications of a society planned, automated, and executed in perfect harmony, the Citizens' Combine was established on the ruins of XCL-XIX Redwater with the goal of establishing a polity where such could exist. Run with intensely totalitarian, mechanised control as one would an automated industrial production line, the Combine seeks to avail itself as one single, gigantic machine with one singular will.
Praxoid Hive
Attempting to accomplish through distributed and biological means a peculiar form of bottom-up totalitarianism, the Praxoid Hive draws much philosophically from both Terran and Novalunar eusocial organisms. The Hive is notable for its extremely rigid society, highly complex and unique hierarchy, the pervasiveness of sophisticated biomechanical augmentation in the population, and enmity with the Hadron Corps.
Solarian Covenant
Existing chiefly in a series of massive orbital citadels, the Solarian Covenant is a highly belligerent, militant theocracy established around the worship of eschatological light-based transcendence. Solarism, the religion to which the Covenant adheres, regards biopsionic technology as heresy to be violently cleansed, putting them severely at odds with most other factions, not least of which the Golden Immortals, their arch-enemies.
Reignholds
Scattered across a huge and hostile expanse of land, the constituent fiefdoms of Reignholds together compose a quasi-feudal societal structure shared to any degree only by the Sunstruck Realms. Most such regions consist of a walled city and fenced agricultural lands beyond, both held in fealty to their sovereigns. Notably, the Altaterra Empire regards them as potentially easy pickings for imperial expansion.
Grailsphere
Steeped in myth and arcana, Grailsphere is a strange and bizarre faction even amidst its post-Tempest Novalunar kin. Prominently, it is the home of a legendary psionic artifact known as the Throne, upon and from which the sole leader Grailsphere has ever known has misruled as an absolute autocrat for centuries, using its power to sustain a hellish form of immortality and control the nation with an iron fist.
Zenith Foundation
Partial to the freedom from troublesome meddling afforded by their various research-oriented space stations in middle orbit and beyond, the Zenith Foundation is a faction that dedicates itself purely to science and the pursuit of knowledge. Viewing scientific knowledge as the ultimate good, the Foundation expends almost all of its resources on investigation and experimentation, not all of which is considered ethical elsewhere.
Hammerscape
Accustomed to the mineral-rich but otherwise largely barren and inhospitable lands of southern Sepideia, the people of Hammerscape are famously tough and hardy; fortunate too, since their skill and technological superiority in metallurgy and materials science has made Hammerscape, it resources, and its infrastructure long sought-after by other factions, some very aggressively so.
Subpole Alpha
Built upon and extended from what remained of XCL-XXVI in the bitter cold of the southern polar ocean, Subpole Alpha came to utilise the hostility of its environs as an advantage; no other faction save for the placid Scions and antipodal Dominion could withstand such frigid conditions and thus pose any threat to the network of subsurface habitats that compose Subpole Alpha, its cryogenic technology notwithstanding.
Scions of Silence
Not so much a fully manifested polity as an autonomous, self-reliant religious order, the Scions of Silence are a monastic community of devotees to the Silence, a religion centred on biopsionic soteriology. Scions practice heavy asceticism, meditation, and various forms of self-mortification; as a result, they are notable for attaining the most superlative levels of biopsionic potency known ever to occur.