The richest and most influential of the Great Clans. Hellridge has exclusive trading privileges with the West Range Federation, which has given it massive economic leverage for the past 30 years. Most of that time has been spent trying to figure out how the clan will survive when the Federation inevitably collapses. 

Hellridge has kept the same name since its inception in early 2031 as an alliance between residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation and survivors living in the Black Hills national Forest. They were the last stop on the Widow’s Passage, and had existed as an agrarian settlement until then. Once given their Agribines, they decided to expand to the Northwest and become autonomous rather than competing with their neighbors. Their main political leader Leila “Defcon” Goss facilitated an what she called an “expansionary exodus” with the hopes of gaining support from other indigenous communities and settling near Bozeman, Montana. 

The Proto-clan took inspiration from Australian truck logistics (and their Caller’s advice) and created fleets of land-trains for moving their supplies. Called “snakes”, these vehicles were essential for navigating the rough terrain and drawing in other survivors. Since they didn’t want to leave any of their previous territory “up for grabs” by other Clans, Defcon established constant relays between their original home and the main convoy. By 2034, Hellridge had established Three Forks, Montana as its new seat of power for a dominion that extended for almost 500 miles to the East and 200 to their North. They had also perfected a system of “nomadic command” where the governing body was constantly moving around their established routes to maintain order and set deals. This resulted in something akin to a fully controlled economy. By this point they were well aware of the horrific fighting to their West and cautious of the Singing Road’s influence. As her health declined, Goss outlined Hellridge’s grand strategy as the region’s agricultural power.

Hellridge would spend the next three years developing its agricultural industry and long-range logistics in an effort to achieve a stable balance-of-power between itself and Agraria. They also worked to develop strong trade relations with the Belters. At the time, there was a consensus that the Westernmost Clans would have to supplement various products from the East with their own inventions, namely fuel. Although Hellridge was successfully running their vehicles off of a crude slurry of various biological wastes, they were gravitating towards “supplementing” the Crude Nation’s budding fuel industry. Hypothetically, Hellridge, the Belters, and whoever survived the fighting in the coast, could form an independent “Western Bloc”. 

Just as Hellridge’s new leader, Shappa Wes-huntington was considering becoming the West’s fuel-producer (she had dismissed the rumors about the Rangers and their Gemini Project as hearsay), the Federation formed. Graler immediately asked her for a summit, where he shared the plans that him and Tara had made for a stable American economy. In this meeting, Graler informed her of how advantageous Hellridge’s position was: they were practically on a goldmine. He also shared his newly-developed concerns about the system’s sustainability. Graler believed that while the survivors of the brutal fighting between the Rangers and the Scifics would participate in the Federation’s system, their children probably wouldn’t. The Federation would exist in its current state for at least a generation, after that it would probably undergo some kind of reordering. Shappa understood, and made plans for Hellridge’s new direction. 

The basic strategy for trafficking in Federation strip would be to scale-up the system created during Hellridge’s initial migration. They would keep Three Forks as a capital, but would extend their nomadic presence to reach buyers in the Guild and other Great Clans in the East. Shappa’s planning revolved around an “announcement-period” where Hellridge entered the markets as a supplier of raw resources. To her, there were the following considerations:

• Maintaining credibility. Shappa had her conversation with Graler in late 2037, he said that the collectives in the Federation would need a year before they produced any strip. The date they set for the first outgoing shipment was around November of 2038. This meant that Shappa had a year to develop a framework for distributing the strip, without any strip to distribute. She needed a way to convince other factions of her faction’s arrangement with Graler and of the coming influx of strip from a region that most of America had written off. 
• Local strip-producers. By far, the people who had the most to lose with Hellridge’s expansion were the five or so small clans that had hitherto produced filled the country’s demand for strip. Hellridge would make them obsolete, so Shappa needed a way reduce their enmity or even find new outlets for them.
• Building and maintaining a cross-continental fleet. 
• Maximizing leverage from Agraria. The deal with the Federation meant that Hellridge would abandon its farming ambitions. Shappa believed that they could use this development to squeeze some favorable arrangements out of a grateful Agraria.
• Securing relations with the Guild. Ultimately, the largest buyer for their strip would be the Guild. Shappa had to develop a strategy that allowed them to meet their resource-needs without creating animosity with the other Great Clans.
• Assurances for the Belters. Even if Hellridge secured friendly relations with the other Great Clans, they couldn’t afford to alienate the one on their doorstep. Shappa needed to assure the Belters that this new direction would not endanger their trade relations.
• Maintaining internal coherency. Trading strip across thousands of miles and the domains of several clans would push Hellridge’s cultural identity to the limits. More than ever, Shappa would need a united and resilient Hellridge to make strip-trading viable.

There was also the hurdle of coordinating with the Collectives about what the actual transfer of resources would look like. And above all, this arrangement was not permanent. Hellridge would need a contingency plan for when the strip-trading dried up. Tara and her inner-circle had made sure that the leaders of every Great Clan and Rillerman were aware of her plan for the Federation. Many had long assumed that Hellridge would eventually fill this role. However, Shappa required a narrative for everyone who wasn’t privy to those arrangements. Her Callers decided to focus on the city of San Francisco, where Graler said that most of the strip would come from. They framed it as a unique city that was free from the poor conditions and frost-heaves that winter brought (even though most of it was flooded in saltwater and the rest was exposed to high humidity), and that its strip was extraordinary in quality. Shappa also tried to kill two birds with one stone by giving local stripping factions exclusive rights to build and maintain the new Hellridge fleet at a handful of outposts. Unfortunately, she was not able to secure any kind of reward from Agraria in exchange for dropping Hellridge’s agricultural programs. 

Developing Hellridge’s relations with the Guild proved contentious. Since Rillerman and Andolous knew about Tara and Graler’s plans for the Federation, they had made Denver a city of the Guild with the intent of it supplying their alliance with strip. Hellridge made Denver irrelevant (The Guild decided to keep Denver as a City because of its proximity to the Belters and Deposed, both of which they needed close relations with. They also did not want to set a precedent of disavowing “useless” cities). The Guild also knew that Hellridge would never be able to trade directly with it. Their previous supply of raw strip had come from several Great and Free Clans, who would target Hellridge for usurping their trade. The Guild proposed that a better strategy would be for Hellridge to curate the strip as a sort of currency. This way, they could access more diverse markets, other clans could still trade strip (albeit as intermediaries), and there would be greater overall economic stability. 

Callers also linked the Federation’s people to Hellridge— after nearly a decade of confusion and suffering, both groups would seize their destiny and rise to become instrumental parts of the developing country. In Hellridge this was known as “The Dawn”, in the Federation it was the “San Fran Compact”. For Hellridge, this process was styled as a sort of reverse Manifest Destiny: native peoples would go East to reclaim their ancestral domains with the power of refuse from the very society that had nearly obliterated them in ages past. This rhetoric created sufficient fervor for over three quarters of Hellridge’s population to take up posts scattered throughout the country.

In the winter of 2038, 200 TEUs of various strip were loaded onto 20 snakes at a depot at Sohon, Montana. It took over a year for that first shipment to reach the Guild City of Omaha, and over half of the convoy’s contents were lost to raiding. Another 30% of the total contents had been traded to other Clans. Shappa, who had followed the convoys made a new system for Hellridge’s logistics. Instead of running “straight-shot” convoys, they would use their outposts as relays. This way, crews could become more familiarized with a given area and better respond to its unique complications, be they environmental or social. This also allowed more streamlined management, as there could be discreet “chiefs” in charge of each sector. There were four “main” sectors planned. The first would take strip from Sohon to Three Forks, the next would go to the Eastern limit of Hellridge’s territory, then to Omaha’s territory, and finally to whatever other destinations were to the East or South. The exact boundaries of each sector were determined each year to accommodate for local territorial changes and threats; “temporary” sectors could also be created.

By the early 40’s, this system had largely stabilized and Hellridge was officially providing transport for specialists from the Strets…

The advent of Dreadnaughts brought new tension to Hellridge’s relation with the Guild. Knowing that Hellridge could use their super vehicles as mobile trading-posts, the Guild made a new incentive structure for the Clan: each year they would calculate a percent of direct trade required for Hellridge to access a Dreadnaught’s territory…

After spending five years optimizing the strip-trades, Shappa retired from her position and began work on Hellridge’s contingency plan. Her idea was to make Hellridge a “detritivore” faction that recycled metal waste from other factions and resold it. This would allow them to keep the same logistics structure and trading arrangements with other factions. The main difficulty would be creating systems where factions would send their old vehicles and scraps all the way to Hellridge, only to have it shipped back to them at a higher price.