Northern Lights Confederacy
The largest of the three Northern leagues, the Northern Lights Confederacy was born on a wave of missionary zeal in the dark days of Reconstruction. The Gentle Prophet Mamoud Khodaverdi was born on the Irrian Plain in what would become the NLC. When his life long follower Nathani Reiss and his son Jakob split after his death in TN 1507, Nathani returned North to the hamlet of Sorrento and began spreading the Gentle Word of Revisionism. The whole region was at that time caught in a bloody cycle of civil war and many were receptive to the unifying words of Second Follower Nathani. After Nathani personally settled the conflict between the twin cities of Valeria and Port Aurora, they (along with Petropolis and Smolensk) joined with Sorrento to form the NLC. Over the following decades many other cities were integrated whither through negotiation or religiously motivated conquest. Eventually, the NLC would come to sponsor the birth of the CNCS in response to the threat of the Republic and its vassal states in the Allied Southern Territories.
Today, the Northern Lights Confederacy remains arguably the most powerful league in the North. Like the rest of Terra Nova it suffered during the War of the Alliance, but its territory was only briefly occupied. Under the leadership of war-hero Anders Von Breslau, the NLC was able to recover quickly. The borders with the Badlands have been rather wild since the war, however, with well-armed bandits and smugglers becoming a real problem. The interior is more peaceful and quite diverse. Corporate-owned towns like Petropolis and Kossuth share space in the House of Congress with religious strongholds like Sorrento and quiet towns like Exeter. This diversity is often overlooked by outsiders, who see Norlights as stuffy religious conservatives.
The league also includes Sesshu, an enclave of artistic expression and (according to some) decadence, and the wild sports town of Innsbruck. The latter hosts the annual Death Track 1000, the planet’s top Gear race that attracts tourists and elite pilots from across the North. Nevertheless, the league has a strong religious streak that has long defined it as a nation. The rise in Revisionist fundamentalism, however, has created many social upheavals in Valeria and across the NLC.
History of Leadership
The Northern Lights Confederacy is generally considered the leading power of the North. The largest of the three leagues, it has the biggest army and is usually at the head of diplomatic initiatives. As the heart of Sorrento Revisionism, the NLC is also often thought of as the “soul” of the hemisphere. It was the NLC that led the charge to unify the hemisphere (despite a long-standing conflict with the UMF) and the CNCS and NLC share Valeria as their capital.
Up until the War of the Alliance, the leadership of the North was generally in Norlight hands and the Northern Guard was largely seen as an annex to the Norlight Armed Forces. The Earth invasion changed much of that. Field Marshal Anders von Breslau, commander of the Terranovan forces, went on to become Norlight president but put a great deal of emphasis on cooperation across the region. He placed a Mercantile general (Victoria Edden-Smythe) in command of the Guard and took steps to ensure that it became a truly independent military entity. Some Norlights resent this loss of status for their league and diplomatic tensions between the UMF and NLC are on the rise again.