Sects of the Bundschuh

[Commissar]

Database #001 – Die Festung

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Leader: Jana Achen
Active: 800A.S-Present
Homeworld: Planet New Berlin
Strength (Personnel): 50-70 Aktivists
Strength (Vehicles): 2-3 Freighters
Branch: Espionage
Primary Role: Extraction

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Militant █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ | █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ Populist

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Goals

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External

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• Enable the escape of Bundschuh supporters from New Berlin and the grasp of police and federal intelligence.
• Observe and report on military mobilisations on New Berlin and disrupt such mobilisations where possible.
• Undermine the capabilities of Bundesrepublik intelligence and border security through a campaign of misinformation, low-level sabotage and assassination.

Internal

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• Secure increased support from the Bundschuh to facilitate direct assaults on government property and personnel planet-side.
• Tighten security aboard Bundschuh installations and ships to prevent infiltration, including increased vetting in the movement's recruitment of foreign fighters.
• Decrease reliance on foreign governments in favour of a return to the Bundschuh's traditional allies in the forms of the Red Hessians and LWB.

History

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The Bundschuh's answer to the Government's myriad 'Internal Security' organisations, Die Festung came into existence shortly before the outbreak of the Nomad War in response to an increase in government crackdowns. The crackdowns, later learned to be the result of incubi active within the Bundestag, targeted academics and scientists associated with the Order and Bundschuh alike.

Originally composed of a handful of government-sponsored scientists quick and lucky enough to escape the initial round of disappearances, Die Festung rapidly grew as the survivors pooled their meagre resources. First content merely to survive on a planet where every camera and uniformed officer promised a 'protective custody' from which there was no return, the fledgling movement steadily transitioned from self-preservation to covert opposition of the Bundestag's goals.

Often no-more than a note arriving minutes before a police squad, Die Festung's timely assistance nonetheless allowed a steady fraction of marked academics to escape the grasp of the government's enforcement agencies. Saddled with a tremendous need for secrecy yet heavily dependent on friends and family to interact with public institutions, the early Die Festung was reminiscent of the Underground Railroad of ancient Sol, shuffling shell-shocked academics from safehouse to safehouse, racing to stay a step ahead of the government. Then, as now, few planetside members had any definitive idea of the scale of the organisation or indeed, any notion of the group's capabilities beyond their immediate contacts.

After the outbreak of the Nomad War the group found itself struggling with an unprecedented flow of hunted men and women seeking asylum. Unable to shelter the refugees without risking discovery, elements of the group made contact with Bundschuh sympathisers on Kreuzberg and made arrangements to evacuate the runaways to the relative of safety of the resistance's facilities. In exchange, Die Festung offered their scientific expertise and hard-won knowledge of polizei operations.

Though Die Festung's operations have diminished significantly since the end of the Nomad War and the subsequent government restructure, the remnants of the group remain sympathetic to the Bundschuh cause. The same secretive procedures that kept Die Festung functional throughout the war are still in use, ferrying would-be recruits and information safely to and from the highly-policed streets of New Berlin.

Capabilities

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Life as an agent of Die Festung is physical draining and mentally exacting. Vastly outclassed by the technologically and numerically superior Federal Police, Die Festung's relatively untrained and often totally unequipped agents rely almost exclusively on concealment to keep them from a cell in Vierlande or the wrong end of a BDM rifle. Agents are often recruited from sympathetic low-level public servants or those with ties to law enforcement, the better to monitor and interfere with operations when the need arises. Working in such intimate proximity to their hunters; however, the lives of such agents once they show their hand are usually short. Individuals that somehow escape the backlash of a government that knows their face are inevitably assigned a false identity and quietly packaged aboard the next transport to take up operations with the wider Bundschuh, where an identity is not so valuable a thing to lose.

The same secrecy that makes Die Festung difficult to eradicate also makes the sect difficult to co-ordinate. Senior members with knowledge of the group's structure usually reside on Bundschuh stations beyond New Berlin, where capture is unlikely; however, the government's dominance of communication on the capital means that any orders to the group must be physically carried back down the gravity well and distributed to the required agents manually, rendering rapid communication impossible. Consequently, Die Festung cells are largely autonomous in their day-to-day operations and rarely operate in teams larger than four or five.

Staging Areas

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Die Festung's web of agents is spread thin across New Berlin. However, there are a handful of facilities that the movement utilises out of necessity. In most cases; however, the sect prefers to make use of a given location no more than is absolutely required, and safehouses change month by month as old agents are compromised and new ones step in to take their place.

• Wilhelm Domestic Spaceport, Altengottern, New Berlin [Equatorial]
A small system-level cargo terminal, Wilhelm is intermittently used by Die Festung to smuggle agents and information off-planet alongside legal shipments and is frequently the last sight a fresh Bundschuh recruit has of New Berlin.
• Warehouse #37, Tauscher Docks, New Berlin [Southern Hemisphere]
An apparently storm-damaged warehouse containing a handful of rooms converted to serve as a command centre on the rare occasions when Die Festung is called upon to conduct operations beyond the scope of a single cell. More often, Warehouse #37 simply serves as another unpleasant stopover on a wanted academic's long trip off-planet.

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End report.

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May you live in interesting times.
| Sarah McFarlen | Jane Hartman |