The founders of House Hammond were made up of employees of a place they called "The Park". The Park was a combination amusement park and species restoration zoo. Building on techniques learned bringing different species back from the brink of extinction they then began perfecting techniques for bringing back animals that had been extinct since before the dawn of man.
The Park was built with four levels with power being provided by a combination of fusion reactors and geothermal power plants. The first level was the surface level, the public face of The Park, and three subsurface levels (Think along the lines of a certain underground corporate viral R&D lab, from you know, that movie that was based on, some video games.) centered around the "urban" developments. Sub level 1 consisted of networks of tunnels, subways, and subsurface bullet freight trains used in the maintenance and upkeep of The Park above. Sub level 2 was made up of a series of vast hydroponic gardens used to grow the majority of the food consumed by the animals above. While sub level 3, in an unusual case of forethought, was where the labs
used for the re-creation of extinct species were built deep under the amusement parks/zoos. This was done for a number of reasons among which included the possibility of an unforeseen mutation in the DNA coding and or something as simple as a rampaging T-Rex could still be controlled and contained without the general public being put at risk. Or in a worse case situation Sub Level 3 could be flooded with Bakelite which is a type of liquid resin that hardens into a near Mega-Damage solid rapidly. Of course this was done more to keep corporate espionage from discovering the company's secrets and being able to reproduce their results.
The house founders were made up of the core employees of the park zoo department. Geneticists & Engineers who made the parks animals and amusement rides, the Caregivers that raised the animals, and the park Rangers responsible for the upkeep and feeding of the animals on display for the public. The park Rangers were made up of former military personnel. Due to the dangerous nature of the animals they handled it was felt that former members of the armed forces would not only be more vigilant in their duties but in the event of a worst-case scenario their training would help ensure speedy resolution with a minimal risk to the general public.
When the machine began its uprising senior members of the Ranger staff could see the writing on the walls. They would be responsible for the rescue and recovery of staff family members that were offsite, the surface employees, historical reenactors, and a large number of the visitors, and the defense of the park itself. This was made only slightly easier for the fact that certain personalities of the machine sought to limit damage to the animal inhabitants. In addition to the SAR missions the Rangers also hit military storage depots for weapons and ammunition. The Caregivers were responsible for both the animals, and the burgeoning new population of humans. Under their guidance the hydroponic gardens would be greatly expanded. The Engineering staff made up of the Geneticists and the Engineers responsible for the creation and upkeep of the mechanical half of the park would find themselves tasked with rebuilding and adapting weapons systems of both armies, Man and Machine.
It was during tunneling to expand the hydroponics that the diggers opened up a chamber that would lead to a vast natural cave network complete with multiple winding tunnels, enormous chambers, and naturally occurring hot springs. The decision was made to move all noncombatants into this new cave network. Doing so ended up being House Hammond's salvation during the early onset of the nanobot plague. Before sealing off their new home in the caverns the Rangers made their way to the surface through the maintenance tunnels and into the park itself. The Caregivers had convinced the Rangers to free all of the animals from the cages and containment compounds in the hopes that the animals would survive in the new wilds, wastelands, nature preserves, mountainous highlands, and even the boneyards and battlefields. The Rangers agreed to do this for their own reasons. They hope the introduction of exotic and formally extinct species might throw the proverbial monkey wrench into the machine's plans. While the Caregivers and Rangers sought to preserve life and wreak havoc on the machine, members of the Genetics department sought to ensure the preservation of knowledge. They shut down the server farms, the brains and electronic memory, containing countless lifetimes worth of decoded DNA. Not just the pure strains but the mistakes, mutations, and alien genes in the hope that this knowledge would once again serve mankind.Once these two tasks were completed all entrances to the former park were either flooded with Bakelite and or collapsed by demolition charges, sealing off their former home to save themselves. Unfortunately the team of Geneticists responsible for hiding the servers fell victims to the machine before passing on their location to the next generation.
House Hammond would live on. Surviving by trading surplus food with the mainland, and helping teach other houses animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, and most importantly, human medicine. They would also prove instrumental in giving birth to the age of splicers. Probably one of the most unique aspects of House Hammond is their acceptance and inclusion of Technojackers. This was done with the cooperation of the heads of all three departments Rangers, Caregivers, and Engineers. The Geneticists were the primary driving force behind this philosophy of acceptance because they knew one day the servers would be found and the Technojackers would be the only ones capable of accessing the information and helping to transfer it to the household Librarians. Another is their allowing Homunculi especially ones that are failed Gardner Host Armor. These become invaluable assistants to the Gardner's helping to maintain plant fortifications and acting as mobile mini-farms for fortification plants and new experimental plants.
Eventually the servers were found, extracted from the ruins and transported to a new safe place. While the servers were en route to their new home three Librarians were created, one from each department to form a new R&D lab using the information stored on the servers. These new Librarians are referred to as the Magi and each one accepted a new name with their new position. They are Melchior the head of the Rangers, Caspar the head of the Caregivers, and Balthazar the head of the Geneticists and Engineers. Their first act as Librarians was the creation of an enormous gene-pool made of three Engineers whose combined pool is an amazing 90' in diameter. They named it the Genesis Pit. So far they have not been able to replicate the Genesis Pit, each time the pools wouldn't merge, they just formed three individual pools. House Hammond would be reborn a third time now specializing in the creation and mass production of War Mounts and more unique creatures using dinosaur DNA as their master templates. House Hammond now finds itself on the cutting edge of both animal mounts and plant fortifications. They may not have created the Gardner but everyone agrees they turn out some of the best and brightest. Even if they're not personally responsible for the development and deployment of plant fortifications they would be the ones to perfect them for mass production. Another example of House Hammond's preference of dinosaurs is the choice of War Mounts used by their Outriders. Most Outriders choose to ride an altered Tyrannosaurus Rex or an Allosaurus. Also instead of Mega-Horses they use various species of Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and or various combinations of the three. In addition House Hammond does not use regular Gorehounds. A Packmaster is paired up with Tiger claw Raptors or Pachycephalosaurus. And just recently they have perfected the creation of mobile Bio-Force Fields based on 3 "sail backed" Dinos'. The Platyhystrix (meaning "flat porcupine") which projects a 10' diameter dome with 200 M.D.C., Dimetrodons which projects a 20' diameter dome with 400 M.D.C., and the biggest sailed Dino the Spinosaurus which projects a 35' diameter dome with 600 M.D.C.. The Bio-Force Field is projected out of the sail to form a force field dome.
Due to the number of carnivorous dinosaurs used in House Hammond, not to mention the hungry humans, when the Lazarus gland was perfected and they got the genetic coding the Rangers collected several species of sauropods for re-engineering. The new Brontosaurus etc. don't regenerate, instead when they are killed all of the beasts inherent Bio-E is focused into carcass preservation. Consumable meat does not putrefied as quickly in these beasties. A freshly killed carcass will be safe for humans to eat from up to 2 to 3 weeks after initial death. The fresher the kill the greater the need to cook the meat before eating. Instead of normal decay and eventual putrefaction the consumable meat goes through a process of slowly drying out into a jerky like substance. At the end of the 2 to 3 week grace period any meat left on the carcass goes into bio meltdown similar to war mounts. After perfecting these new sub species they were produced and released into the wild and it is now estimated that somewhere between 30 and 40% of all sauropods, hadrosaurids, and similar large plant eating herbivores are made up of the new species. The only way to tell between the old and new species is to kill it and observe the rate of decay. With the success with the Brontosaurus and Seismisaurus House Hammond has begun to apply these same modifications to other large size herding herbivores and are starting to move on to mammals.
As to the geographic location of House Hammond they are based on a series of islands. Imagine if a landmass approximately the size of England were located near the equator with less than 1 mile from the largest island to the mainland. Before the insurrection of the machines a series of tunnels for both traffic and freight trains connected the islands to the mainland. The largest of the islands had almost all of the visitor hotel and housing for all of the islands. In addition to the hotels the main island was dotted with some of the largest and newest equipped amusement parks on the entire planet. The main island also featured multiple casinos and several fairly large historical reenactment/theme parks across several different periods in history from around the world (think of your local Renaissance Festival/civil war reenactment/mountain man and trapper get together). Land that was not being used for amusement purposes went into the creation of small towns and small scale cities to house Park employees and give them a place to shop, to buy groceries etc. The rest of the available arable land on the largest island went into food production, using GM-O's for the highest yields and pest resistance without the kill gene's that required buying new seed every season, some to feed Park employees and the people that serve them off the clock like a normal city or town. The largest amount of land is farmed in a way to help produce enough plants to help feed all of the herbivore and other plant eating beasties. After a bunch of the Park biological attractions had been herded onto the mainland and released the Rangers destroyed the "Chunnels" on their way back to the Park.
The entire group of islands are surrounded by underwater mega-damage containment fencing designed to keep all of the ocean type dinosaurs and dinosaur like/size creations contained but free to swim about and feed themselves on normal fish and fish that are specially farm grown (fish farm) fishes of different species as well as those that can make it through the fence. No aquatic creature of any kind is allowed in these enclosed mini-seas that may be small enough to escape out in the normal ocean. The fence is made up of specially modified species of coral that grow in a layered fence like pattern. Any damage done regenerates automatically (the fences are about 10' thick but are not solid and have 100 M.D.C. per 10' section and regenerates 10 M.D. points per melee) and have been crossbred with several different species of jellyfish whose tentacles only strike at creatures trying to get from the inside out. Other organisms/free lunches can safely pass into the fenced in area and will not be stung. The jellyfish tentacles are designed not to kill but to encourage a definite distance from the fence.
Despite House Hammond's many apparent successes, they have had their share of problems. Things like the lost/missing servers. It would take many, many, many decades of searching before they were finally recovered. During all that time the threat and fear that the machine might find out about this treasure trove of genetic data. If Gaia had ever gotten wind of the servers and what was on them she would have torn all the islands up and apart looking for them. She wouldn't have cared about any loss of biodiversity (After all She could always rebuild, replant, and repopulate.) because of the privately generated data and possible cryo-zoo. The humans may have had success where Gaia met with failure after failure. But luckily she has yet to learn of them. All the information has been copied and backed up so the servers are now just piles of deadly junk that even now the machine would do whatever it could do to get them. The only reason they have not been slagged is that there is an on going debate over slag'em or preserving them as a future historic artifact.
Another problem they had in the early years were difficulties with overpopulation issues. Until it was decided to break off chunks of population to create starter Minor Houses thus spreading out the people and increasing mankind's chance of survival. Each Minor House was initially set up with one Librarian, at least two genepools' and between 20,000 to 30,000 people with an additional 500-1000 military personnel to make a new colony or Minor House. As each new minor house was born they would take the last name of a famous past geneticist. Beginning with Mendel then Watson, Crick, Wallace, Tschermak, and Swaminathan for a total of six Minor Houses. All these satellite houses' come willingly to each others aid and defense. There was nine but three of them began highly controversial research into areas such as cloning, extreme human modification, and even Bio-warfare of the mass destruction variety. As each new atrocity was uncovered these three houses were given a choice, either exile to the main lands or complete destruction down to the very last cell. They all chose exile over death and had their original names stripped, they were given the names of Mengele, Ishii, and Taha AL-Azawi. Hammond was lucky that these fallen houses were found out before the servers were found so they have none of the advanced DNA codes. Their only knowledge of these servers are whispered legends.
The worst, at least on a personal level to the majority of of both Major and Minor houses, are the accusations made by other houses of the resistance of deals being made with one or more aspects of the Machine. These accusations stem from the fact that most of the initial Machines assaults were focused on only a few of the major Metro/Casino/Park zones while leaving most of the historical "villages" and as much of the animal habitats untouched as possible by a combination of orders from Gaia and the fact that the other personalities were demanding resources in areas of higher conflict. By the time Gaia was able to focus her attention back on The Park most of the remaining humans had not only moved underground but had already begun moving out of the old complex's and destroying those locations.
Later when the various personalities were taking stock of their new "Domains" the personality of Eve looked upon the various historical towns and found what she perceived as premade Retro-Villages that simply needed "restocking". First She sent in steel troopers to mop up or capture any remaining actors. Then service robots to extract any and all metals while trying to do as little damage to the on site buildings as possible. Once She deemed the sites clean she began the task of repopulating them. To give her new pets a chance she instructed the service robots to build new walls around the towns using wood or stone depending on what would be appropriate for it's time and area. The new walls were meant to protect Eve's new playthings from the remaining zoo animals as well as penning her toys in. All this attention was yet another source of accusations of collusion with the machines. The real truth is that the actors living in these villages were apart of the early evacuations. Any humans found were squatters the majority of which were killed by the steel troopers. The survivors were given the choice of reliving the past, or death. Gaia controls the vast majority of the islands and grudgingly lets Eve have and maintain her pets. Both have no idea of the Houses under their noses, nor the incredible treasure trove of genetic data. They are also clueless to the fact that over time every one of the retro-villagers has been replaced by the descendants of the original actors and actresses. This is a three fold win because it helps relieve over population, gives military personnel a place for a little R&R or leave on the surface and gives the houses a spy network that is the best of any house, at least as far as the islands go. None of the other great houses in the resistance are aware that all the individual Minor Houses are the "children" of House Hammond. They think that they are just closely aligned. When the final push against the machine comes House Hammond will be able to potentially field the largest army of the resistance.
Each house is run by a council of three. Each member is chosen from the most senior or talented person in their respective departments. The head of the Rangers is chosen from either Dreadguard, Roughnecks, Archangels, or Outriders. This person holds the title of Warlord. All decisions are made by counsel consensus except military or security matters although the Warlord is expected to listen to any recommendations from the other departments.
Population Breakdown: House Hammond
110,000 total people.
8% Archangels
2% Biotics
12% Dreadguard
- Engineers (18 plus the 3 that make up the Genesis Pit)
- Librarians (3 plus the 3 Magi for a total of 6)
8% Outriders
2% Packmasters
20% Roughnecks
4% Saints
1 % Scarecrows
2% Skinjobs
1 % Technojackers
30% Non-Combatants
10% Other O.C.C.s
Each minor house is also run by a council of three. Each member is chosen from the most senior or talented person in their respective departments. The head of the Rangers is chosen from either Dreadguard, Roughnecks, Archangels, or Outriders. This person holds the title of Warlord. All decisions are made by counsel consensus except military or security matters although the Warlord is expected to listen to any recommendations from the other departments.
Population Breakdown: average Minor House
30,000-70,000 total people.
8% Archangels
2% Biotics
12% Dreadguard
- Engineers (6-12 total)
- Librarians (1-2 total)
8% Outriders
2% Packmasters
20% Roughnecks
4% Saints
1 % Scarecrows
2% Skinjobs
1 % Technojackers
30% Non-Combatants
10% Other O.C.C.
Let me know if ya like it or have any questions.
(tee hee, tee hee) 
