Factions of the Lakelands: Archetypes

22 Aug, 2026

For my weird post-apocalyptic setting, for now called the Lakelands, there's a needle I want to thread between giving GMs ways to make the setting their own and giving them everything they need to run a game in the setting. That's not an easy task, of course.

Take factions: rather than creating a definitive list of specific organizations that operate in the setting, I'm instead creating faction archetypes, like raiders, rulers, hunters, or delvers. Then I'm creating a few examples of each. The archetypes are there to provide scaffolds, Schelling points, and inspiration for tables that want to make up a lot of setting details for themselves. It gives them a sense of what kinds of factions exist in the Lakelands and support play. The examples, once they're more fleshed out, will be there for GMs who want to run out of the box something I've already made for them.

There are ten faction archetypes.

• Delvers, scavengers who explore ruins and dreamzones in search of valuables.
  • Example: Open Sky Charter, a Lakelands scavenging company that uses floatplanes and looks for pre-Arrival schematics and scientific equipment.
• Extractors, agents of foreign companies or governments who have come to take the Lakelands' resources.
  • Example: EinzelLösungen, a European company whose notoriously ruthless mercenaries provide security, transport, and logistics for other extractors.
• Helpers, humanitarians that respond to disasters by distributing resources or making connections.
  • Example: the Forest Roots Network, a local interfaith group that tries to arrange mutual aid agreements between communities.
• Hunters, lodges of daredevils, mercenaries, and zealots who fight supernatural monsters and mutant beasts.
  • Example: the Firelock Lancers, an organization of thrill-seeking trophy-hunters who fancy themselves dragonslayers.
• Observers, libraries and laboratories that hope to better understand the Weird, the Lakelands, and the Lakelanders.
  • Example: the White Pages Society, a network of local archivists and historians dedicated to keeping the region's pre- and post-Arrival history intact.
• Raiders, those Lakelanders who support their own comfort or freedom by preying on other Lakelanders.
  • Example: the Bristly Rose Gang, a host of misfits, fugitives, and outcasts, led by geminite sisters who reject concord and espouse libertarian ideals.
• Rulers, the governments of city-states.
  • Example: Tricity, a city-state on the edge of Kitchener-Waterloo and seat of a growing alliance of surrounding farms and villages.
• Saviours, those militias, clandestine societies, or R&D labs devoted to protecting the Lakelands from the Unbound and/or defeating the eldritch horrors once and for all.
  • Example: the Chivalric Order of the Argent Field, aka the Silver Knights, a disciplined militia whose companies patrol the Lakelands' fringes.
• Sorcerers, occult cabals who study the Weird and try to master it.
  • Example: Siren's List, a group of transhumanist explorers and cataloguers who experiment on themselves in dreamzones and interview idols and egregores.
• Traitors, groups of mortals who betray their own kind in service of eldritch horrors.
  • Example: the Takers, a clandestine network that kidnaps Lakelanders and delivers them to idols or the Unbound.

The lines between these archetypes, of course, are blurry, when they're even there at all. How far must an observer who studies the Unbound go before she becomes a sorcerer? Saviours of course employ hunting parties who fight mutant beasts; what makes them saviours rather than hunters? And how much does a village care if the people who pillaged them come from a city-state or camp in the woods? However, I think it's in general helpful to have these categories as guideposts, rather than not to have them at all, especially as most factions will fit clearly into one rather than another. Moreover, the Lakelanders themselves think in these categories. If some overseas government sends a team to meet with a town's elders, the townsfolk will ask each other if these foreigners are helpers or extractors. You can therefore have fun with the factions that don't quite fit: maybe a group changes from one archetype to another over the course of the campaign, or maybe it has different reputations in different regions, depending on how its members behave.

Source: Hajran Pambudi, 2017, Unsplash license.

In order to avoid my own biases somewhat and ensure some conceptual coverage, I decided to organize these faction archetypes using Magic the Gathering colours, specifically the five arcs and five wedges. (See also one of my conclusions in "Appendix N.5: This Time With Feeling.") Each example faction then prioritizes one of its three colours over the other two. For instance, I think of delvers as blue, red, and green, and Open Sky Charter is roughly two parts blue, one part red, and one part green.¹ These are only starting places, however. If a faction archetype or example faction grows beyond these colours in ways that make sense for the setting, I'll try not to worry about it.(You shouldn't worry about it, either. If these help you, they help you. If they don't, then don't bother with them.)

The colours for each faction archetype are as follows:

• Delvers: blue, red, and green, suggesting exploration, discovery, and creativity.
• Extractors: white, blue, and black, suggesting hierarchy, organization, and covert operations.
• Helpers: white, red, and green, suggesting compassion, neighbourliness, and versatility.
• Hunters: white, black, and red, suggesting courage, recklessness, and mastery.
• Observers: white, blue, and green, suggesting systematization, local knowledge, and truth-seeking.
• Raiders: black, red, and green, suggesting independence, impulsivity, and unashamed selfishness.
• Rulers: white, black, and green, suggesting order, diplomacy, and force projection.
• Saviours: white, blue, and red, suggesting idealism, discipline, and heroism.
• Sorcerers: blue, black, and green, suggesting amorality, curiosity, and self-experimentation.
• Traitors: blue, black, and red, suggesting ruthlessness, autonomy, and clandestine action.

If you don't know much about Magic the Gathering's colo[u]r philosophy, the MTG Wiki website is a great place to start. See its articles on White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. In particular, each of these pages has ideas about what the colours agree on and what they disagree on. I find this suggests lots of internal conflicts for three-colour factions, as well as places where factions from different archetypes might work together (or at least work similarly).

For the time being, I'm still working out how I want to mechanically express a faction archetype. With a system like Fate Core, I'll use the Bronze Rule to render each faction as a character (probably with an adjusted skill list), so in that case the faction's archetype can give it one free Stunt, or perhaps a Stunt and its choice of three Skill increases. I'm still not sure about this, however, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time exploring the mechanics of the factions here.

In the meantime, I'd like to start exploring what uses these faction archetypes have within the game and what they look like within the fiction. How do the hunters hunt? Who do the helpers help? And what do the delvers delve?

#for GMs #post-apocalyptic #the Lakelands #worldbuilding