Personal Faction Dossier: Free Cities (New World)

Overview

The Free Cities shimmer like neon oases on the blasted plain, enclaves where neutrality is both shield and invitation, where every pleasure and ambition is for sale behind walls built not of faith or blood, but of profit. Here, amid the **** collapse of the old world, the arcologies of the Free Cities offer a haven to traders, fugitives, and visionaries alike, a place where no creed dominates, and no doctrine limits the market’s appetite. Their one true law is commerce: anything can be had, so long as the price is met and the peace is kept. In these districts, the banners of every faction flutter above the crowd, but none rule; every language is spoken, every appetite catered to, and the flesh trade flows without judgment or restriction. The Free Cities are not utopias, but engines, relentless, adaptable, and unburdened by ideology, thriving on the diversity that elsewhere breeds conflict.

Origins

Born from the detritus of failed monarchies and zealot crusades, the Free Cities found their independence in pragmatism and sealed doors. As the world splintered into warlords and theocrats, these city-states raised walls, locked airlocks, and welcomed all who could trade, no matter their allegiance. Outcasts, innovators, and runaway nobles found sanctuary within their neon-lit corridors, bringing with them not only the art of survival but the techniques and ambitions of every world faction. In time, the Free Cities grew into crossroads, blending the forbidden and the conventional, the old world’s tradition with the new world’s appetite for reinvention. The only thing they refused was dogma, everything else was permitted, negotiated, and made profitable.

The Free Cities Today

Today, each Free City is a patchwork of districts—markets, pleasure zones, **** academies, innovation enclaves, where the boundaries blur and every day brings a new synthesis. In the shadow of their towers, trade councils govern not by fiat or blood, but by consensus and ledger. Contracts are king, and disputes are settled by arbitration, not ****. **** schools flourish, liberated from the dogmas of faction and the prejudices of tradition, blending methods, customs, and augmentations from every corner of the decayed world. Here, combat training can be paired with erotic obedience; pleasure conditioning with discipline and defiance. The result is a dizzying, ever-evolving array of flesh and mind, crafted and refined for the needs of the present, unconcerned with the shackles of the past.

Markets buzz with novelty—hybrid slaves, experimental roles, techniques lifted and recombined from the Argent Bastion, the Emberborn, the Gilded Hand, and countless lesser cults and factions. In the Free Cities, innovation is not just permitted, it is expected, and every new idea is a commodity waiting to be tested. Factions and clients arrive from all directions, seeking not only goods and bodies, but knowledge, methodologies, enhancements, and creative solutions that cannot be risked or tolerated in their homelands. Neutrality is fiercely defended, for it is the lifeblood of their prosperity; the Free Cities tolerate anything except threats to the peace of the market.

Limits and Contradictions

Beneath the neon harmony and the banners of open trade, the Free Cities are not one polity but a scattered network of arcologies, each jealously guarding its own methods and clientele. Though loosely allied for mutual security, banding together to repel raiders or negotiate with powerful factions, their internal politics remain turbulent, marked by commercial sabotage, clandestine talent raids, and the perpetual jockeying for prestige and innovation. When war or embargo closes supply lines, the Cities’ unity is tested; rivalries flare, old feuds surface, and the very independence they celebrate becomes precarious, contingent on the shifting balance of trade, diplomacy, and shared self-interest. In the Free Cities, survival is never guaranteed, and their freedom is renewed each day only through the ceaseless, sometimes ruthless, competition that defines both their greatest strength and their deepest vulnerability.

Personal Reflections

The Free Cities are at once the new world’s marketplace and its laboratory, their pulse the restless thrum of commerce and invention. Here, bonds are forged not in blood but in contract, and every tradition is just another tool to be adapted, recombined, or discarded. They are the neutral ground that makes the survival of the old world’s flesh trade possible—the places where yesterday’s enemies can sit across a table, haggle, and shake hands on new terms. In the end, their genius lies not in purity or power, but in the willingness to change, to profit from difference, and to let every kind of desire, no matter how contradictory, find its place in the endless bazaar.

Personal Notes