Editing Dystopian Wars (section)

=== The Enlightened ===
The Covenant of the Enlightened is the Covenant of Antarctica of old. Their capital & the bulk of their stuff are still in Antarctica, but now Enlightened members are also present across the globe in “Promethean Complexes”, Large advanced enclaves that serve as Fortress-Laboratories for the scientists within. Antarctica in fact consists of 2 especially large Complexes built next to each other, one on the Coast & one on top of “The Vault”, a crashed Alien Spaceship the secrets of which most of the advanced technology in Dystopian Wars is based on. These Enclaves are kept around by the nations they reside within partly because the techno-fortresses are incredibly well defended & partly because they make & sell advanced parts & machinery to them, Britain’s flying-battleship fleet for instance were designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel from his Complex & probably uses many intricate parts that he supplies while any Sturginium & RJ-1027 the Crown might need also comes from members of the Enlighted (RJ-250 especially). The Enlightened is also far more of a collection of scientists then a hard & fast nation state. So while the Crown might fight & even go to war with other members of the Enlighted, their relationship the Brunel is going to be much better, hell some “Peers” as the scientist caste is known have straight up defected to their home countries. Add to that the fact that if you destroy the only complex in the world that makes the bits needed for the homing part of homing torpedoes then you’ve shot yourself in the foot & earned the ire of every nation in the world that used those torpedoes as well.

It should also be noted that The Enlightened in 3.0 is much less unified than the Covenant of Antarctica that came before. They are led by their founder Barnabas Sturgeon, “The Vault” serves as a kind of capital & the Enlightened certainly do look out for each other, but each Complex is its own kingdom & is doing its own thing. Especially since the Covenants different members are split between 2 schools of thought.

The Custodians believe the nations of the world are to warlike & uncivilised to be worthy of the advanced alien technologies of the Vault, that after sharing their early findings with the world the result was flying battleships & esoteric killing machines so to share more is to abet apocalypse (We discovered WMDs in the Vault & realised those barbarians can’t be trusted with nuke, similar to their motivation under the Spartan) .
While the Egalitarians who think the Alien technology of the Vault should be shared sold to the rest of the world & sure maybe millions would die at the hands of advanced weapons we created but… We’d make a fucking killing selling those weapons & also out Fortress-Laboratories will double as nuclear fallout shelters. Also, we should help mankind advance & grow & stuff sure.

Initially the Egalitarians were very small in number having been expelled from Antarctica following Markov’s betrayal. Until Burson Carpathian got his hands on a Hex shard (a broken piece of an Alien god. Unrelated to the Alien spaceship in Antarctica. Yes it’s a little confusing.) & discovered he could milk it, this forbidden God-Milk  could be refined into RJ-1027 which can then be used to make Super Petrol, Extra Killy Guns, Performance Enhancing Drugs/Psychotics & all sorts of other stuff. It is fuel & for a ton of stuff now, mixed into the ammo for a lot of weapons, is used in Many of the Enlightened’s most fucked up genetic experiments & it gives the Egalitarians a major boost in influence, since they can trade it to Custodians for vault based tech & can buy from the source at a discount, provided of course that their view of Egalitarianism is the same as Carpathian's (I.E sell weapons, shack up in Complex, watch the tendies flow in as the world burns). This is what he did during the American Civil war, earning tons of cash & materials at the cost of millions of lives over the course of the conflict. They are all members of the Enlightened however, & Antarctica is only the capital, so while they have their major disagreements, they all look out for one another, & all horde the really good stuff for themselves (people like Tesla who start full on serving a nation instead of just selling deadly schematics to them are kicked out wholesale). It should be noted that while the Custodians may have arguably more noble end goals, they are in no way morally superior to the Egalitarians. In fact some of the fluff texts that describe the way Non-Peer (Peers are the scientist caste) members of the Enlightened are treated show a pretty cruel & Darwinian culture has been forced upon the lower castes (the Fighter Planes are crewed by quadriplegic cyborgs literally wired into them, yet they still get used like the disposable drones the old Spartan era Antarcticians fielded) & while each complex does things differently, Antarctica is definitely breeding people into an animalistic warrior caste to fill out the boarding parties of their unique ships. Carpathian’s Egalitarians may be uncaring arms dealers but the “Only we may be trusted with the secrets of the Vault.” tenant of Custodian thinking reads less like an indictment of the Great Power’s warlike nature & more like simple hubris. Can nukes really be trusted to them either? They are the ones fielding battle time-machines after all.

Unlike Most other Great Powers, the Enlightened doesn’t have minor nations or sub factions (you could call every Promethean Complex could be its own sub faction, but they are all the same rules-wise). In battle they still field smaller amounts of the most advanced warships in the game, however they aren’t totally focused on Long Range warfare like they were before. In fact some of their fancy Microwave guns work best at point blank range. Now they tend to want to use their Techno-Defences & Pseudo-Submarines to close the gap so they can unleash Particle Cannons & Aetheric Oscillators & their other technobabble themed war crimes at their most effective range bands (which tend to be closer). They are rather tricky for new players to learn, mainly because all their esoteric weapons & special effects are a lot to keep track of for someone who’s also learning the game (they do not possess regular Gun Batteries, just Particle Cannons, Swarm Torpedoes & Microwave Emitters). Essentially an elite faction that favours being in short range, outnumbering them is easy & effective but their fancy ships are full of advanced repair apparatus so will still be hard to bring down even under weight of fire. Can also launch robot whales like underwater fighter squadrons, which is nice.

I know what you’re thinking. Why aren’t they called 'The Covenant'? That’s what people called them before & it would fit better with the other faction’s naming conventions. That’s a good question. The answer is probably cause their integration into the Enlightened faction in Wild West Exodus.