The strangest and most remote part of America. The Verdant Delta is a flooded wasteland full of cultists, yet it is responsible for the cultures, histories, and soul of the Post-Burnout country. 

Originally the states of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, with significant portions of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the Verdant Delta was formed early in the Burnout. In an effort to frustrate immigration from the Gulf of Mexico and America’s South Eastern seaboard, and to “neutralize” most of the population in the South, U3C developed a particularly effective strategy. After running several iterations of computer-simulations, their High Command identified a handful of locations that, when compromised, would flood the entire region. In the Fall of 2030, this plan was enacted. By January, the Mississippi Delta had quadrupled in size and drowned millions in the process. Surviving groups were made up of communities who already lived in high-altitude areas (The Regis Colony), or those who had been displaced and become naval.

Apart from covering up most of the available resources, the water itself was highly problematic. The Delta was fed from river systems throughout America, which was violently imploding. Waste products, air-pollutants, debris, and hundreds of thousands of corpses made their way into the Delta and heavily contaminated it. Worse than the various chemicals was what grew in the Delta’s water-supply: Naegleria Fowleri. A bacterium that thrives in warm fresh water and is lethal to humans that swim in its territory. Colloquialized as “the Foulness”, this organism continued to strain the already desperate survivors. The combination of various algaes and pollutants made the water appear dark green.

Where Verdance diverges from the early histories of other major factions is in the ambiguity of its “defining moment”. There is no actual confirmation of this event, but apparently Verdance started with a psychotic break in a member of an improvised flotilla. It is unknown if this break occurred before or while the individual was submerged, or if the submersion was intentional or because of an accident. Nevertheless, someone became fully immersed in heavily tainted water for a substantial period of time. Their companions assumed they had drowned. But this person came back up with a strange calm. This person then spoke at great length at how they had been “Immersed in that Verdant Hell” and had come to fully accept the world and their circumstances. 

There are two accepted possibilities for what happened while that person was underwater:

• Prophetic Realization brought on by a Near-Death-Experience (NDE). And the individual’s survival was pure luck.
• The powerful neural signature brought on by a NDE was enough to have the pre-existing Verdant pattern bond with the individual and rapidly “indoctrinate” him in an ideology that the pattern had already formed from local inputs. This is very possible, as the NDE from a five-year-old off the coast of Canada was enough to create a whole new pattern of Membrance (Stager-Pattern). This invalidates the theory that the pattern only formed and started interacting with humans after years of contact with an established Verdance.

Either way, this person survived without any ill-affects and effectively founded Verdance— arguably the most influential faction in Post-Burnout America.

Central to all Verdant Philosophy is the notion of “immersion”, or total embrace of aberrant circumstances. This practice has been essential for survivors coping with the end of the previous civilization, leaders making new societies, and the generations born afterwards. It states that one must “peel away” from whatever existing notions of reality they have and form new ones. While simple, this “standardization” of a coping process was essential in the rejection of Pre-Burnout culture and the adoption of new practices. 

The interior workings of Verdance, and their Delta, have always been inaccessible to outsiders. One can only assume that their ideology rapidly spread through the area, and formed some kind of governing body with the capacity for strategic planning and large-scale recruitment. Some factions reported radio-contact from the Delta, and mentions that they “were coming”. It was during this period that Verdance presumably trained their first generation of Callers. During this era, Callers stayed with their factions and trained native replacements. The final stage of this training was for the acolyte to make a pilgrimage to the Delta and receive their “blessings”. As cultural exchange and communication between factions improved, Verdance became regarded as a sort of “spiritual epicenter”, for the redeveloping country. 

Because of its low population, geographic span, and overall inaccessibility, Verdance was able to become self-sustaining within its own territory. Their naval teams perfected a combination of dredging, diving, and other subsurface operations to reliably strip underwater settlements for the resources needed to expand. Several floating towns were built during the Hungry Years, along with ships and smaller communities on dry land. Verdance’s “faith” continued to develop with a handful of monasteries and the emergence of their elite class. The “Deep Verdants”, a small and reclusive council were regarded as Verdance’s policy-makers and spiritual leaders. By this point, Verdance was no longer sending out their own Callers, yet they continued to train ones who came from other factions. They also trained some of the best navigators, potters, carpenters, sailors, and aquatic specialists in the country. Verdance never developed military assets or had a standing army of any kind. By the early 40’s, Verdance had developed oceanic ships and was trading artisanal goods throughout America’s East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Some speculate that they made contact with surviving groups in the Caribbean, and even South America. 

The arrival of Formers in the country started an ideological split. Verdance prohibited Formers’s operatives from entering their Delta, and Callers were resistive to any political advising or conditioning from the Order. Formers was concerned that Verdance’s emphases on mysticism, and cultural divergence would lock the country in its current technological level and frustrate redevelopment. The Order adopted a strategy of gradually absorbing Verdance. They managed to “flip” several Callers by offering them informational resources. Through these informants, Formers amassed a limited understanding of Verdance’s history, command structure, and grand strategy. They assumed that Verdance’s goal was a fully-immersed civilization— one that had no interactions with or knowledge of Pre-Burnout society. After years of observing what they perceived as cultural regression, Formers determined in the early 50’s that they had an ethical prerogative to dismantle Verdance. 

Formers originally planned to use Maxwell Lewis and his followers as a “counter-Verdance” ideology. However, in ’53 they received several concerning reports about changes in the Delta with the following commonalities:

• Massively increased religious stratification.
  • Rather than working exclusively with Callers and policy-makers, the Deep Verdants were influencing all levels of Verdant culture. Residents were attending frequent religious ceremonies, performing more “rituals”, and behaving with far less materialism. 
• Physiological changes in human populace.
  • The Delta’s residents appeared immune to the water, they were swimming in it, drinking it without PPE and any negative affects. There were also mentions of increased resistance to physical trauma, or abnormal healing amongst the populace. However, Verdance’s population remained incredibly low for their geographic domain. 
• Physiological changes in the Delta’s ecosystem.
  • Sources confirmed that the variety of plant and animal life in the Delta had exploded. Areas that were previously dead-zones, or choked with algae, now had fully developed ecosystems. More so, there were accounts of new species that had evolved to the high-altitude aquatic environment, giving the Delta many characteristics of an enormous swamp.
• Growing consensus on an upcoming “arrival” event.
  • In conjunction with the increased religious/spiritual presence, there was a growing emphasis on an upcoming event. In public addresses, closed meetings, and average conversation, there was a consistent subtext. This event, whatever it was, was not portrayed as objectively good or bad: instead, it was stressed as something that would bring profound change to Verdance and the world. 

Despite the fact that most of this information came from Callers, who were already known for skewing everything towards the supernatural, or non-Verdance communities who lived near the area, Formers considered this information valid on account of the volume of reports, their consistency, and the stakes. Committees assigned to faction proposed three explanations for these changes:

• Formers had grossly underestimated Verdance’s intelligence assets and the overall cunning of their leaders. Most of Formers’s sources had been double-agents the whole time and they were feeding the Order a false narrative in order to make Verdance appear as a greater threat. This perception was intended to either make Formers back down, or increase their aggression against Verdance. If Formers increased aggression, Verdance would use these hostilities as grounds to rally an overwhelming majority of factions in America against the Order. The “upcoming arrival” was fabricated to further stress Formers into making poor decisions. 

• Verdance had complete access to the functioning Gemini-Project “Dufresne-3.2/Bio/SE”. This project, buried deep under the Talladega National Forest, housed an instance of a “Dufresne-3.2” AI, a nuclear reactor with 60 years of fuel, support for personnel, and bioengineering labs. The project and its siblings were intended to utilize the AIs and labs to produce breakthroughs in bioengineering, specifically genetic modification. Three projects were initiated, the one in Alaska never finished construction, and the personnel for the site in Nebraska were killed en-route. Verdance definitely had the proficiency in deep-water operations to access the site without flooding it. The surviving personnel in the project had integrated into Verdance’s society, possibly as the Deep Verdants, and distributed their findings. The project had been successful, and Verdance was genetically engineering their environment and population with unprecedented skill. They planned to replicate this technology and distribute it to factions in America in a manner similar to the Widow’s Passage. 

• Verdance had an “X-factor” that was completely unknown to Formers. This factor was driving their religious mania, alterations to the environment and theirselves, and would soon “arrive”. The factor could be something produced by the unique environment within the Delta, a Gemini Project so secret that even Formers was unaware of it, related to factions in the Gulf of Mexico or South America, or even extraterrestrial (research on the Aria-pattern and Membrance as a whole was limited to extremely restricted sects within the Order). 

Formers’s high command decided that Verdance had possession of the Dufresne-project in their Delta. They determined that short-term intervention was necessary and made plans for the rising military power, Regime to invade the Delta in the summer of 2055. 

This invasion, largely on improvised warships, was a success. In July, Regime had sacked the floating Capitol and, assuming that the population would flee into the ocean, was taking up positions in the Atlantic. On Date, Verdant Night, the Barrier-Pattern collided with the atmosphere. Most of Regime’s fleet was dependent on astral navigation and unable to navigate back to land. Forces within the Delta quickly lost contact. In the following weeks, thousands of Verdant refugees made their way to the Swells. It is unknown how much of their population remained within the Delta. 

In hindsight, Formers determined that the factor responsible for Verdance’s behaviour was a Membrance-pattern. Dubbed the “Verdance-pattern,” this pattern is believed to be exclusive to the Delta and its populace. Presumably it exists within water systems and is absorbed via consumption by plants, animals, and humans. However, it’s “activation” is not guaranteed. Regime troops and other outsiders who consumed unfiltered water from the Delta typically died from bacterial infection or other complications. Once in an organism, the pattern can transmit to other hosts via fluids or reproductive systems. Verdants born after leaving the Delta also have the pattern in them. 

Even without a formal command structure, Verdance’s network of Callers has endured and become largely self-sustaining. Many factions supplement the Delta’s inaccessibility with pilgrimages to neighboring groups or the Swells. And Verdance’s philosophy is still viewed as a “third polarity” for the competing ideologies in America. ustaining. Many factions supplement the Delta’s inaccessibility with pilgrimages to neighboring groups or the Swells. And Verdance’s philosophy is still viewed as a “third polarity” for the competing ideologies in America.