FERT

"For such a powerful organisation, FERT is certainly an underwhelming name for it."

- Mr. White remarks on the organisation's name

FERT, also an acronym of the Kingdom of Italy's motto FERT, is a global criminal and terrorist organisation that features heavily in the story Pick Up The Pieces, set fifteen years after the devastating global Apocalypse featured in Apocalypse Now. Led by the enigmatic Lord Hood, the organisation features as the main antagonists of Pick Up The Pieces, alongside Russia and the British Commonwealth.

It is a vast international organisation with its own facilities, safe houses, and operations. Notably, FERT is not aligned to any nation or nationality, despite the fact that it has its origins in Italy, allowing it to operate as an apolitical entity.

History
In the aftermath of the Apocalypse, many of the worlds' secret societies were in disarray and order, not to mention the largest one of them all, the Khaos Brigade. The Khaos Brigade itself was in tatters- the Old Satans, the Heroes, and Qlippoth all lay in ruins.

FERT itself had its origins in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, itself a creation of the Congress of Vienna. However, the organisation itself would not take shape until after the Second World War, with the dissolution of the Kingdom of Italy. It was initially a small organisation, made up of Italian monarchical loyalists, and it was initially founded for that purpose. But the man who is known as Lord Hood would grow to take over the organisation, and turn it into something far more devious than a loyalists' restoration league.

Nevertheless FERT itself did not possess a large amount of resources. It was small, and badly kept together, but it played its cards. It became respected by the Italian Mafia as one of the regional criminal organisations in Italy, and by the Sicilians, too, to whom it was very partial.

However, with the Apocalypse and its ending, much of the Khaos Brigade lay in ruins. Although the Brigade's command structure hadn't survived, a surprising number of individual Khaos Brigade members did, and all of them were restless and without a cause to serve. In addition, a great many preexisting criminal organisations, such as the Triads, the yakuza, the French Unione Corse, U.S. gangster rings, and even descendants of Heroes were also left bereft. Being the deft political manipulator that he was, Hood united all these organisations into one under the banner of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

And thus FERT in its present day incarnation was born.

Ideology
FERT's motives are extremely complex. Its surface goals appear to be commercial enterprise- they have significant involvement in a majority of criminal enterprises, such as human trafficking, the drug trade, arms dealing, and various other nefarious exploits. For example, they used James Bradley's company to launder heroin through the streets of New York.

However, FERT has proved to be less unified than originally thought. For example, Baines and Dandy, two of FERT's most influential commanders, wished to restart the Apocalypse and release Michael and Lucifer back into the world, and worked to re-perform the Seven Rituals of Sin to break the seals on the Cage, facing opposition from White and Frost. However, perhaps the best part of FERT's ideology can be described by Ellis, who compares what FERT wants to waiting for your opponents to bleed out before making the kill. Similarly, FERT's main strategy is to instigate conflict between the world's great powers, hoping that they would exhaust themselves and be vulnerable when it seizes power, a position that Ellis reveals that he and Lord Hood support.

Henceforth, the three main ideologies of FERT can be divided into the following sections: FERT's organisational discipline is notoriously draconian, as shown by James' remark, "This organisation does ot tolerate failure." It exacts swift executions on those who fail it. Furthermore, to heighten the impact of the executions, it often focuses on an innocent member, making it appear that their death is imminent, before turning around and killing the actual person, catching them off-guard. Nevertheless, FERT is known for its ruthless efficiency, so executions are extremely rare. The strict codes of loyalty and silence, and the hard retributions that followed violations are hallmarks of the organisations it has either subsumed, such as the yakuza, the Triads, the American, Italian, Russian, and Sicilian Mafia, and others.
 * Restarting the Apocalypse: A position held by Baines and Frost, who wished to restart the Apocalypse. They hoped to do this by breaking open Lucifer's Cage, which held the two archangels Michael and Lucifer. This was probably the most self-destructive faction, since to release the two archangels would lead to the destruction of the solar system, galaxy, and even Universe. This group was supported by a majority of the former Khaos Brigade members. Although this faction was not as influential as the others, it was the most supernaturally powerful, with a majority of the organisation's supernatural members falling in line behind Baines and Dandy.
 * Conflict Instigation: A position initially held by Ellis, but eventually revealed that Lord Hood supports it too. This involves sowing the seeds of conflict between the worlds' great powers in order to weaken them all, so that FERT could step in amidst the chaos and achieve world domination. As such, this faction worked to stop the Apocalyptic group from letting Michael and Lucifer out. Despite having Lord Hood's support, it was the smallest faction.
 * Working In the Shadows: A position held by White and Dandy; FERT should not do any of the two above options, but rarther continue as they've been doing, such as influencing and manipulating governments and achieving soft power and global influence, rather than either cause their destruction or unleash Michael and Lucifer. Led by White, the organisation's second-in-command, and also by Frost, one of its deadliest, it was the largest faction within FERT.

Headquarters
FERT has no truly 'central' operating base. They have a regional operating center for every continent. However, the center located in Dune, Africa seems to be the place where their leaders have a tendency to congregate. Thus, the facility in Dune can be compared their 'base of operations,' though it is no more important than the other centres. Nevertheless, FERT's leaders showed distaste when it was destroyed, showing that maybe they favored it more than the other centres.

The regional centres themselves were often used as the singular lairs of individual high-ranking FERT operatives, such as the North American base being used by Ellis, the European one favorited by White, the base in Australia utilised by Frost, or the South American base being inhabited by Baines.