Via Casilina Community

The Via Casilina Community is a loose independent confederation of systems located within the Aquila-Sagittarius side of the human colonial sphere, in a region widely known as the Madara Fringe. The polity gets its name from the Via Casilina trade route, which connects most of the member systems. Some member worlds are also located along the route known as El Camino, a fork of Via Casilina charted during the war by independent groups seeking to flee the Covenant.

The alliance was based on an extant economic and political bloc within the UEG in the pre-war era. Despite the rebellious past of its founding worlds, in the post-war era the Via Casilina Community has sought to distance itself from outright militancy and taken steps to establish itself as a legitimate government. As part of this process, they have opened up trade and diplomatic relations with the Phoenix Initiative and the UEG, albeit as equals rather than subjects.

Member worlds

 * Monte Rosso
 * Venezia
 * Gao
 * Aleria
 * Binterall
 * Mindiria
 * Medina
 * Diluvial

Culture and society
Located within the UEG's Sagittarius-Cygnus Quadrant, or FLEETCOM Sector 3, the worlds of the Via Casilina Community went largely untouched by the Human-Covenant War. However, the conflict still affected them in the form of numerous refugees fleeing to the local worlds, particularly Venezia, which saw the population of what was formerly little more than a mining outpost growing dramatically. A greater effect still was the opening of trade with Covenant peripheral elements in the later years of the war and particularly the post-war era. Along the Tempest Crossing ingress route and from deep within the galactic trailing side of the human sphere, various Covenant fringe elements such as traders, pirates and miscreants and even defectors discovered the world and began flocking there in increasing numbers upon seeing the opportunities there. The arrival of High Charity's largest refugee flotilla and their settling at the Strewn Shore to the spinward of the Madara Fringe would further cement Via Casilina's place as a melting pot of not only various human colonial cultures, but now also those of the ex-Covenant. The continued trade with the post-Covenant has also given the VCC much of their technological and industrial prowess, which enabled them to remain afloat independent of the Phoenix Initiative.

The Community's primary languages are English and the Madara Creole, which blends various languages spoken in the region, including Italian, Spanish, Swahili and Malay; in the post-war decades, even some words and phrases originating with the post-Covenant (particularly Kig-Yar traders) have entered the Creole. While the Community has sought to prioritize the Madara Creole in official usage while sidelining English to distance themselves from the UEG and UNSC, the significant population of refugees and transients has so far ensured the retention of English as a widespread common language.