Union Delphi
The federal capital of the Merikan Union
The mighty Union capital used to be a backwater fisher's wharf. My kin are descended from mollusk scrubbers! Ol' Governor Vinyard doesn't talk about that much, but it's true. The Delphans of Skyland were descended from dune rats, and they lived as serfs under the old Tetrarchy! After the Delphi Pact the Servitor clans of the Delphi Zone rose in rebellion against their technocrat masters and became big dogs in the new Republic. Maybe we should have seen the rest coming. Within a generation they nullified the Merikan Congress and started a civil war. I think you know the rest. The Servitors ran the machines for the Princes. Now they are the new technocrats.
Once a provincial backwater of the Princes' Hidden Empire, the town of Delphi has risen through civil war and political strife to become the industrial center and political capital of the hegemonic Merikan Union .
Demographics
Many of the inhabitants of Union Delphi are members of the aristocratic class of Servitors and dwell within the city's metropolitan capital district. The majority of the city's population are of the Junker class and subsist by labouring to sustain and expand Union Delphi's burgeoning industrial growth.
Government
Union Delphi is governed as an enclave within the federal regime of the Merikan Union. As such it is administered as the immediate privileged domain of the governing Union President, who rules his capital with unquestioned authority.
Industry & Trade
Coal mined from the ancient foothills of Appalachia remains a powerful engine for industrial development within the Merikan Union today much as it had been for the ancestral Race Fathers of the Precursor Era. Exploitative mining techniques pioneered by the Princes' technocracy had blasted through miles of mountain to reveal yet untapped veins of the ancient black rock. After the Fall of Princes, the Servitors resumed their mining operations which have only expanded and accelerated since Unionist faction took control of the Merikan federation.
Union Delphi's extensive coal works fuel all manners of industrialized production and manufacture. The capital city's technological advantage has given it a decided economic advantage among the Union's disparate federal Zones, which has led to rapidly widening wealth gap between the Servitors of Delphi and the landed establishment of the other Zones.
Infrastructure
Since the Fall of Machine City, much of the industrial infrastructure of the Merikan has been relocated to the Zones of the eastern seaboard. Most of the machinery and tools evacuated from Machine or recovered from its ruins have actually been used to develop the industry of the capital and today the reestablishged Merikan Steam and Steelworks Company operates as a centerpiece of Union expertise and ingenuity in the heart of Union Delphi.
In spite of traditionalist technoclast sentiment, the factories of Union Delphi are beginning to churn out steam engines, rifled firearms, explosive chemicals and other such products of early-industrial technological progress. All of these implements seem bent to serve a still larger mechanical purpose: the insatiable Merikan war machine.
Guilds and Factions
Among the dominant trad-fams of Delphi's old Servitor families, the scions of Clans Strom and Vinyard are the leading lights of the radical Unionist establishment. The presidency of Harlan Strom has governed for nearly eight years as a virtual dictatorship heedless of congressional oversight or constitutional restrictions. The pretext for President Strom's autocratic reign has relied in large part upon the interminable state of warfare that has persisted in the Laradan Borderlands and against the seafaring Southern Kingdoms. But the resilience of President Strom also depends upon his political alliance with James Vinyard, paterfamilias of Clan Vinyard and influential Governor of the Delphan State. Governor Vinyard's command of the powerful Delphan Homeguard client army serves to consolidate Strom's authority as Merikan Commander in Chief and render sufficient repressive authority to legitimize the President's singular reign.
The underclass of Delphan labourers, known as Junkers, has begun to politically organize itself in response to the Union's controversial reversal of traditional policies regarding Merikan technoclasm. The nascent Junker Party, a heterogeneous mix of Libertones, Indepretenders, and orthodox religious partisans is gathering popularity and influence across the Merikan states and plans to nominate a candidate to challenge President Strom in the presidential election of 1000 PCE.
History
The Servitors of the Delphi Zone were the primary administrative vassals of the Hidden Empire and maintained the technological infrastructure under-girding the Princes' continental reign. Since the Fall of Princes the Servitors secretly expanded their theoretical knowledge of natural science and emerged as the leading political force in the new Merikan society.
In the intervening years of Merikan Independence, the Servitors steadily built up their power base in Delphi until finally overthrowing the Republic and establishing their autocratic Union regime. Newly renamed as capital of a reformed Merikan federal state, Delphi became known as Union Delphi and the Servitors claimed control of the old Republic's discarded levers of power.
Type
Capital
Population
650,000
Inhabitant Demonym
Delphans
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