Ironically, the City that produces the Guild’s Dreadnaughts was also the birthplace of two Great Clans. The second-to-last stop of the Widow’s Passage was Denver (Third-to-last if one includes their encounter with The Singing Road). Although the city was seriously considered as a Last Stand by U3C, they ultimately decided it would be a better waste of resources to declare Los Angeles one. In the early Burnout, Denver’s last legally-elected mayor, Mary “Tracy” Trece, was a Christian religious-fanatic. Tracy ran on a platform of organizing a Southern-bound refugee column to Los Angeles. Her proposal was backed by several thousand members of the National Guard and even whole defecting units from the Army and Marine Corps. They left in April of 2030, with several million people from Denver and the region as a whole. They planned to progress along the I-70 and then I-15 Interstates to reach Los Angeles. U3C decided to officially sanction the movement, in the hopes it would attract as many people as possible to apply maximum pressure to Los Angeles. Ultimately, this movement performed a sort of “pre-Locust-Era” along its path by draining settlements of most of their population, resources, and vehicles. When Los Angeles fell in August, Tracy’s movement was in Primm, Nevada. They decided to backtrack and occupy Las Vegas. Within weeks, there was already severe infighting and pressure from marauders. Over half of the group determined it would be safer to head North. Just over ten-thousand made it back to Denver in the spring of 2031; most of their number had either died from starvation, raids, or attempted to settle elsewhere. In their absence, Denver had survived the Locust-Era and had become a Proto-Clan. The survivors in Denver were quickly redeveloping the industry to convert their car’s engines to run on Agribines. They were also well-acquanted with Passage-Theory and their culture was becoming increasingly centered around light industry. Survivors from Tracy’s movement had become heavily disillusioned with ultra-religious culture and had already become experienced with survival in desert environments. They also believed that remaining in one location would make them vulnerable, and that nomadism was the only way to survive. 

The reintroduction of Tracy’s movement prompted a period of reconfiguration for Denver. The people in Tracy’s movement knew that their counterparts in Denver had clear technological and cultural advantages, but they were also wary of joining another cult. The people in Denver also knew that they would require the combat and navigation experience from the refugees. Above all, their Caller stressed that they should maintain some degree of cultural uniformity. They agreed to become a semi-nomadic people with a firm base in Denver. They would survive by trading industrially-manufactured products while the people from Tracy’s movement provided defense and conducted raids for materials. The people in Denver made production-lines for Agribine-compatible engines, metal arrows, and modular armor plating. They would then transfer all of the relevant machinery onto flatbeds, which could be slowly moved along roads while producing. This Proto-Clan, known as the “Belters” for their ability to “belt-out” simple goods and the territorial swath they occupied quickly started interacting with the surrounding region. They recognized two sub-clans: the “Trading Belters” and “Raiding Belters”. As Hellridge began moving further North, the Belters expanded East. The clan’s leadership strategized over which groups they should raid, and kill, and which ones they should make trading partners. They eventually realized that it made the most sense to forcibly extract materials from anyone who was beyond the range of their trading convoys. They also re-established contact with other survivors from Tracy’s movement who were surviving in un-Immersed communities in the Southwest. Simultaneously, the Trading Belters annexed and Immersed several other communities with their own defensive assets— most notably the village of Belltower in 2033 (formally Larned). Belltower was named for the defensive fortification in the center of the town made primarily from the area’s churches and other “useless” buildings (they had lost all faith in God after their first encounter with marauders). During the Locust-Era, they had started manufacturing their own ammunition and were eager to scale-up their production with the Belters’s resources. Although they agreed to only manufacture anti-vehicle rounds, it was clear that the people from Denver would no longer be dependent on the Raiding Belters for security. 

In 2034, the Belters split. The trading survivors from Denver would remain the Belters and keep most of the territory. Everyone else would become the “Deposed” party, who would have free reign over everything to the South of the Belter’s territory.