The Brimstone Cities have always been at a crossroads between major regions of America. In the Burnout, they were torn apart by flocks domestic refugees leaving for either New York or Chicago, and in the Locust Era they were further ravaged by marauders from both cities. The Brimstone Cities cannot trace their lineage to any one group of marauders or survivors. They provide a glimpse at what redevelopment without Passage Theory might have looked like on a national scale. The farthest East that Tara’s convoy passed was Eolia, Missouri, to give an Agribine to what would become Agraria. Without such aid, the Brimstone Cities spent several years as a network of over 20 autonomous city-states. Many adopted a strong “warrior-culture” as influenced by their time as marauders (or fending them off). There was mild raiding between the cities and decent trade. By 2032, the I-70 had essentially become their Silk-Road for agricultural and artisan exchange. The consensus amongst the cities was that they would exist in a system akin to medieval feudalism with a similar technological level. One of the largest players in this early system were the Vintages, a marauding group from New York City who had made it all the way to Jeffersonville in southern Indiana. The Vintages had flourished during the Locust Era after recruiting a group of professional war-reenactors and antique firearm enthusiasts from Pennsylvania. Now settled in Jeffersonville, the Vintages were producing Civil-War era cannons for settlements to defend themselves. 

Verdance noticed this industry and decided in 2032 (after trading a schooner for three 120 mm cannons) that the Vintages would be their “beachhead” for trying to Immerse the region. F5 had also taken note of the semi-organized states growing on their doorstep. In fact, they had favorable dealings with the splinter-cell of the Alphas heading for New York City. F5 was able to convert the group’s leadership to their ideals and keep the marauders on retainer as a “reserve paramilitary”. They knew that a private army was only a temporary check against the industrial war-machines that would soon arise in the West. F5 needed an entire buffer state between their allies and what would become the Guild and Great Clans. Thus, they sent envoys to the Reigning-Alphas and Ruinous to try to convince them of the cultural and technological value of F5’s territory. Pittsburgh ultimately became the easternmost border of the Strets. Groups of Atlantics soon followed and helped the Marauders regain some of their Pre-Burnout mobility. However, their exclusion from the Widow’s Passage didn’t make the remaining settlements part of the Passage Lands. The fate of this relatively neutral region was officially determined in 2036 when second-generation Callers met F5 diplomats in Cincinnati as the city was joining the Guild. In their first ever meeting, Rillerman and High Priest discussed the potential relationship between the Guild and F5 with a single Caller to moderate. Rillerman wanted the Guild to have exclusive access to the Strets in exchange for it receiving a resource-tribute akin to two Cities. Priest considered, but the Caller cautioned against this offer, as any kind of exclusivity with a valuable trading-partner would breed resentment amongst the Clans. Furthermore, Atlantics had already been dispersed through a number of Clans. Both sides agreed that the Strets should remain a “closed-off” territory that could not directly influence any political body in the Passage Lands. The region itself also had significant implications, regardless of its neighbors. Three of the four (the fourth being the Blue Column, and at this point the people in the East knew nothing of the Scifics) most prolific Marauding factions of the Locust-Era had settled in the land between Agraria and the Strets, and they were also developing highly effective anti-vehicle weapons. If consolidated under a single power, threatened, or in any way seriously motivated, these groups would pose an unacceptable threat to the redeveloping country. 

They determined that the only compromise that would satisfy the Guild, F5, and the Clans without threatening the Immersion in the Passage Lands or risk unleashing an unstoppable horde of Marauders would be to make everything in between Agraria and the Strets into a decentralized Great Clan while giving Cincinnati over to the Guild. This new Clan, known as either the “Buffer-Guild” or “Spectrum Cities” to the Guild and F5 respectively, would be composed of the major settlements in the region, including Jeffersonville, Pittsburgh, Bellefonte, and over 20 others. They would be consolidated under a new system of lore with the following points: 

• They were once the greatest Marauders in America who had fractured and diffused the very soul of the nation. 
• In the time since the Burnout, two spiritual “hemispheres” had arisen (the Passage Lands and Strets) and now the cities were responsible for maintaining balance between them. 
• The human soul has high plasticity and can be easily corrupted through too much exposure to the “insanity” of either the Passage Lands or Strets. Souls could be reinforced through pilgrimages to locations in the old America or through possessing relics from the more spiritually-grounded era. 
• individuals who could withstand the distinct insanity of both the Passage-Lands and the Strets were of the highest value. 
• There would be a new political system that consisted of a three-body congress— one for the population in Passage Lands, one for the population in the Strets, and one for the cities themselves.
• Callers also combined regional influences from the Strets, Guild, Blue-Column, Agraria, Triumvirate, Northway, Atlantics and the experiences from the survivors and Marauders into a stable cultural identity. It has been described in Un-Immersed settings as “Viking-Metal meets Pike-and-shot and modern psychedelics” 

While the Guild had a City in this new Clan’s territory, they would still need to go through their Buffer-Guild to access the Strets. The same would go for every other Clan. Cincinnati would also produce a line of ultra-heavy cannons to arm the Guild’s Cities and convoys (and later Dreadnaughts). In the late 30’s Hellridge and the self-declared “Brimstone-Cities” exploded onto the scene, bringing two more distinct cultures, political systems, and resources into the Passage-Lands. Yet another one of Rillerman’s political gambles seemed to have worked, until 2041, when Formers arrived. The transhuman Order was immediately vilified (probably with encouragement from the Deep Verdants) by the Brimstone Cities’s Callers as an affront to human souls. The Clan declared a policy to kill any Formers that they encountered, which dramatically slowed the Order’s progress into the West. 

Another point of contention between the Brimstone Cities and the Guild was the invention of Dreadnaughts. By ’46 it was clear that each component City of the Guild planned to become “Dreadnaught-capable”, including Cincinnati. In one of their congressional-meetings, the Brimstone Cities devised a plan to keep the supervehicles out of their territory. They approached the Guild with an offer to start manufacturing even-heavier cannons to be mounted on Dreadnaughts if they agreed to deny Cincinnati its own genus and not send any Dreadnaughts eastward. If the Guild rejected this offer, the Brimstone Cities would then propose to share some of their insights on maintaining cultural unity between their cities and pilgrimages for the same concessions. Unbeknownst to them, the Guild had already decided that there was absolutely no point in shipping Dreadnaught parts from Denver to Cincinnati, as the City had always been one of the alliance’s most secure holdings. Nevertheless, they accepted the offer for Cincinnati produce cannons with a barrel diameter up to 4’ for Dreadnaughts and to transfer a third of the Brimstone Cities’s Pilgrimage-Callers to various Guild Cities. Most of the Clan’s leadership knew they had been ripped off, but they decided to maintain good terms with the Guild instead of participating in the creation of Siege-Companies like the other Great Clans. Ships from the Brimstone Cities are regularly used to escort Dreadnaughts or break another Clans’s siege. 

There is still a good deal of resentment between the Brimstone Cities and the Guild, especially after seeing how Agraria was able to positively influence the design of the Lubugbrious Dreadnaughts. Leaders opposed to the Guild have tried to use their ties to individual Dreadnaughts to stoke tension between the crews of the supervehicles and their parent Cities. In the early ’60’s, many of the displaced factions in the Swells have relocated to the Eastern territories of the Brimstone Cities and are clashing with F5.