| Locals | |
|---|---|
| Լոծալես / Locales | |
 An Imperial Council-aligned locale group in 1943 | |
| Active | 1933–1950 |
| Country | Creeperopolis |
| Allegiance | |
| Type | Militia and paramilitary groups |
| Role | Local defense, local police |
| Size |
|
| Engagements | |
Locales (Creeperian script: Լոծալես, Creeperian pronunciation: [loˈkales]; Creeperian for "locals") were decentralized militia and paramilitary groups during the Creeperian Civil War. Locales were composed of Creeperian civilians and often served as local defense militias and de facto police forces for municipalities, towns, and villages across of Creeperopolis.
Locales were used by both the Catholic Imperial Restoration Council and the National Council for Peace and Order for local enforcement behind the frontline, but some locale groups functioned independently or held allegiances to other civil war factions. Some locale groups joined loose coalitions with each other and some merged to form larger paramilitary groups throughout the course of the civil war. After the Creeperian Civil War ended in 1949, the locales were demobilized by the Creeperian government or merged into the Romerist Nationalist Front (FNR); not all locales willingly demobilized and the Creeperian Armed Forces forcibly demobilized many locale groups resulting in tens of thousands of deaths between 1949 and 1950.
The locales are commemorated as an important part of the war effort during the Creeperian Civil War and various locale museums exist across Creeperopolis. Locale culture is significant in Creeperopolis, especially in rural areas where their presence was strongest during the civil war. Analysts believe that the locales influenced the later rise of street gangs in Creeperopolis and partially contributed to their rise in influence during the late 20th century.
Name
The name locales in the Creeperian language means "locals", as in inhabitants of a particular area. Locales is an informal name given to a series of local defense militias that were located across Creeperopolis during the Creeperian Civil War. The name was used by soldiers of both the Catholic Imperial Restoration Council (Imperial Council) and the National Council for Peace and Order (National Council) to reference militiamen that took up arms to defend their communities but held a loose allegiance with any of the civil war's various factions. Locale militiamen embraced the term, but individual militiamen primarily referred to themselves by the name of the locale group they were affiliated with. In Creeperian, individual locale groups were often referred by the plural form of locales rather than by the singular form.
Officially, the Imperial Council referred to locale groups as Imperial Territory Self-Defense Organizations (Organizaciones Autodefensivas del Territorio Imperial, abbreviated OATI), while the National Council referred to them as People's Localized Defensive Collectives (Colectivos Defensivos Populares Localizados, abbreviated CODEPOL). Following the end of the Creeperian Civil War, the Imperial Council-led Creeperian government continued to officially refer to locales as Imperial Territory Self-Defense Organizations, but the term locale has been used in unofficial capacities by Creeperian politicians and military officials during interviews, speeches, and commemoration ceremonies.
Locales were also referred to as da khlko dafaa (Deltinian: د خلکو دفاع; literally "people's defense") by Deltinians, bertakoak (Honduran for "locals") by Hondurans, and amachay huñusqakuna (Senvarian: 𐐪𐑋𐐪𐐽𐐪𐐷 𐐿𐐳𐑍𐐳𐑅𐐿𐐪𐐿𐐳𐑌𐐪; literally "protection groups") by Senvarians; these groups also used locale-like militia and paramilitary groups during the Creeperian Civil War but to lesser extents than the Imperial and National Councils.
Individual locale names
Each locale group had its own name, and as there were thousands to tens of thousands of such locale groups, many names repeated. Locales were often named after the settlement they were located at, after a politician or religious figure, after an ideology or important date, or after an intended goal. Names varied in length, with some being as short as a single word while others were up to dozens of words long. The Locale Heritage Foundation, an independent non-profit organization, maintains a catalogue of confirmed locale group names with the intention of "preserving the history of each locale by preserving their core identity: their name" ("պրեսերվար լա'հիստորիա դե ծադա լոծալե ծոն պրեսերվանդո սփ իդենտիդադ ծենտրալ: սփ նոմբրե"); as of January 2025, the foundation has over 3,200 locale names listed in their catalogue.
Organization
Locales were decentralized militias and paramilitary groups that effectively functioned as independent military units. Most locales swore allegiance to either the Imperial or National Councils, but it was not uncommon for some locales to function completely independently from any faction in the Creeperian Civil War. Fewer locales swore allegiance to individuals or other militant factions of the civil war. The vast majority of locales were independent of each other, however, some formed loose coalitions with each other and other merged with each other to form larger paramilitary groups.
Locales were formed by citizens of towns and villages across Creeperopolis where regular soldiers were unlikely to be stationed. These settlements formed locale groups as a form of self-defense and protection from civil war violence, and as the Civil Police effectively lost all jurisdiction it had prior to the civil war, the locales also served a police role in their respective settlements. Locales typically directly answered to the mayor or other community leader within a municipality, town, or village.
Most members of locale groups had little-to-no prior military or police experience. Members, who were also known as locales, were often self-trained. The few locale members who had prior military or police experience were frequently named as the leader of locale groups; the remaining locales with no such members selected their leaders through their political backgrounds, age, roles within the community, or appointed a junta or other sort of collective leadership. Locales were armed with weapons provided by the civil war faction they supported or with weapons they stole. The sizes of locales varied greatly, with the smallest locales consisting of around a dozen members in small villages and the largest consisting of up to thousands of members in large settlements. Women and children often joined locale ranks as soldiers. In total, historians believe that tens of millions of Creeperian civilians were members of locales during the civil war making the locales one of the largest military units in history.
As locales were not traditional military units, they were not effective at combat when their settlements were engulfed by military offensives by the Imperial or National Councils. Locales were, however, more successful at mounting guerrilla tactics against the armed forces. Locale groups were responsible for hit-and-run attacks on military garrisons, sabotage of infrastructure and supply lines, staging ambushes, and committing acts of terrorism on civilian and military targets.
History
Formation
When the Creeperian Civil War began in January 1933, the Creeperian Armed Forces fractured into factions that supported Romero I's Imperial Council and Miguel VII's National Council. The armed forces withdrew their forces from various settlements that were deemed to be strategically unimportant leaving them largely undefended. In order to defend themselves, the governments of municipalities, towns, and villages across Creeperopolis established self-defense militias and paramilitary groups to protect their settlements where the armed forces did not.
Some leaders within both the Imperial and National Councils objected to the formations of local militias arguing that it threatened their sovereignty behind the frontlines, but the majority of high ranking officials supported the formations of these groups as it offloaded the defense of these settlements to the locals. By late 1933, almost all settlements in Creeperopolis had a locale-like militia or paramilitary group protecting them.
Service to the Imperial Council
Imperial Council military leaders believed that if law enforcement and peace keeping behind the front lines could be reliably outsourced to locale groups, it would save the military money and resources to be able to wage the civil war. Imperial Council minister of defense Army General Adolfo Cabañeras Moreno supported the establishments of locales, stating in late 1933 that if locale groups could defend themselves from the "communist menace" ("լա'ամենազա ծոմփնիստա"), it would allow the armed forces to focus on "eradicating the communists" ("երրադիծար լոս'ծոմփնիստաս").
On 18 October 1933, the Imperial Council military high command established the Bureau of Imperial Self-Defenses as a part of the Ministry of Defense to provide official oversight over the conduct and actions of locale groups. The bureau also functioned as a representative body of the locales in the Imperial Armed Forces that sought to advance their interests in war planning and on their future after the civil war. In 1935, Adolfo Cabañeras Moreno referred to the locales as a de facto fifth branch of the Imperial Armed Forces after the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Imperial Guard.
Under the Imperial Council, locales remained broadly autonomous and experience little interference from Imperial Council military affairs. Many locales in viceroyalties that were firmly controlled by the Imperial Council experienced very little combat, with historian Martín Campos Ortega writing that some locale groups in viceroyalties such as La'Unión and Xichútepa only ever engaged in combat with each other over local disputes. Conversely, most locales in frontline viceroyalties gained extensive combat experience against National Council military units or aligned locale groups. Most locales received little recognition for their contributions to the Imperial Council, but some larger groups such as the Crusaders for King Alfonso and the Militarist Nationalist Front have since been recognized by the Imperial Council as official co-belligerents during the civil war.
Service to the National Council
Independent locales
Some locales did not swear allegiance to either the Imperial or National Councils, instead deciding to defend their settlement independent of any civil war faction.
Other services
Demobilization
By the late 1940s, some Imperial Council military and political leaders came to believe that the Bureau of Imperial Self-Defense had become more loyal to the locales than to the Imperial Council itself, and as such, it limited the bureau's influence in war planning and ended any dialogue regarding the post-war role of locale groups. This distancing of the bureau from the rest of the Imperial Council concerned many bureau officials and major locale leaders who sought to maintain the Imperial Council's favor past the civil war. Bureau director Divisional General Joaquín de León Gallegos attempted to convince Minister of Defense Army General Alfonso Cabañeras Moreno to regularize the locales in order to fully integrate them into the armed forces as a local gendarmerie force to complement the Imperial Guard, but Alfonso Cabañeras Moreno dismissed de León Gallegos' proposal.
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After the end of the civil war in late September 1949, the Ministry of Defense determined that it would not be in the government's best interests to allow millions of paramilitary soldiers to remain armed when the immediate threat of the National Council no longer existed. On 8 October 1949, Alfonso Cabañeras Moreno issued the Imperial Military Consolidation Decree that ordered all locale groups to either dissolve or merge into either the armed forces or the Romerist Nationalist Front (FNR), the paramilitary wing of the Creeperian Initiative (the country's sole political party). The decree did not allow locales to integrate and retain their organizational structures as de León Gallegos, instead demanding their complete merging and reorganization.
Legacy
Commemoration
Locale culture
Portray in media
Influence on street gangs
Notable locale groups
The vast majority locale groups were overall insignificant to the outcome on the civil war individually, but some groups played key roles in certain engagements or in maintaining order behind the frontlines. Furthermore, some were also individually noted for attribute that distinguished them from other locale groups such as size, names, affiliations, or other aspects about the groups. The following is a list of some notable locale groups.
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