Aphelion Collective

Sitting adrift a ice sheet separated from Antarctica's encasing mass, the Aphelion Collective shines forth among a sea of blinding white. To the surface, one would see much what they would expect to see for a large settlement at such a location - densely packed infrastructure designed primarily to retain heat. All openly visible buildings are hued a strange cobalt-Prussian blue, and at no time can anybody bar military personnel be seen above the surface.

The citizens themselves live in spanning enclaves constructed inside the ice sheet itself. Everything that can be found in a normal city environment can be found sutured within these icy halls.

For citizens to deal with the extreme climate that the Collective resides in, the government distributes a deeply classified drug, codenamed APEX to the people. The drug has two primary effects: it simultaneously speeds up and alters the body's sympathetic nervous system, allowing users to better deal with the cold (along with other auxiliary effects such as enhanced reaction times), but at the same time, the drug also induces the user into an almost hypnogogic state, yet while allowing them to retain the limbic functionality of a normal person.

Citizens of the Collective frequently report that they 'are never alone', and the very few visitors to the settlement over the years have commented on the eerie silence that engulfs the settlement, as residents apparently communicate entirely wordlessly with each other by proxy of this drug induced trance-state. When residents do communicate to people not under the effects of the drug, they speak in a static monotone voice devoid of any emotion or expression, as per a side effect of APEX significantly slowing down speech function in the frontal lobe.

As described by a resident of the Collective, the government structure is simple in the sense that there isn't one. Decisions that need to be made on a daily basis are made via an apparent 'mass consensus' by residents and personnel under the effects of the drug, which can reportedly be carried out in a matter of minutes should the circumstances prevail.

In order to communicate effectively with people external to the collective, a single unit known as 'Ephemeral' is allocated for use during times that require a delicate foreign presence. In order to retain the higher cognitive function that is required for expressive dialogue through the act of actual speaking (something which ordinary APEX heavily suppresses), 'Ephemeral' is administered a special regimen of altered APEX, which not only greatly expands the accessible range of the Collective, but also allows the use of normal speech in all of its glory - at the expensive of being physically detrimental to the user as a whole. As such, 'Ephemeral' are often physically ill and frail individuals, and at best, last no longer than thirty years.

Military strength is paramount to the Collective, purely because they are no stranger to hostile incursions upon their way of life due to the outlandish nature of it. Many foreign governments view the Collective as a military dictatorship which suppresses its population by usage of biological weaponry, but when former members of the Collective are asked about their experiences within it, they only smile and mention that they miss the company.

As such, the Collective's military is extraordinarily advanced for a nation of its size - with nuclear capacity long since perfected, and various advances being made in the counter-intelligence and espionage departments. APEX is known to boost soldier's reaction times to near superhuman levels and thus, the ground forces of the Collective are coveted as being among the most efficient in the world.

The Aphelion Collective currently resides under the banner of the SOS Brigade, for no extensive or ideological reason other than that the denizens of the alliance were the most openly accepting towards the Collective's unique way of life.