Document: excerpt from Breaking the Walls by Meng Qui. This book is the sixth volume of her Complete History of the Ember Group, published in three editions between 241 and 253 ASC. Footnotes and annotations have been removed. For the full text, see [DOCUMENT REFERENCE EXPUNGED]
[...] The succession of General Ahnah as leader of the Group in the last years of the Schism led to a significant paradigm shift in Group politics and organization. General Oviyan, carrying over the policies of the original Fire Nation group, had focused on centralization and chain-of-command. By concentrating industry, habitation and agriculture in the Lagoon and the Owl's Nest, he believed that further shattering of the disparate elements of the Group could be avoided. Ahnah's reforms completely reversed this policy. A Souther Water tribeswoman by birth, Ahnah had served in several of the infamous SWT Ijiraq divisions, flying columns of waterbenders and kayakers specializing in mobile, nonlinear warfare. Her policies were those of the guerilla; distributed, adaptable warfare. In 72 BSC, with the support of the newly elected Ember Council, she began the Forge Initiative to rebuild the Group's combat capabilities from the ground up.
The concept of the Forge, similar to Ahnah's ideas on war by stealth, was based on concepts liberally borrowed from the modus operandii of the Ijiraq. That force used a widespread system of small armouries to avoid Fire Nation attack and supply line disruption. Each armoury was nearly identical in capacity to every other armoury, and could be easily concealed by virtue of being buried in ice. As ijiraq forces moved, they would activate new armouries and shut down old ones, ensuring a flexible but consistent supply of armaments. The Forge Initiative was simply this on a much larger scale. Manufacturing facilities would be removed from the Lagoon and the Nest, and spread out across various smaller bodies. Each Forge had capacities identical to all the others, and information sharing through the newly-perfected optigraph system meant that the loss of one Forge was only a minor blow to the capacities of the Group as a whole. Furthermore, and increasingly controversially, the Forges would operate as per the model of the Overlord Division, which would be restructured into the Overlord Forge. The lack of any ethical oversight or strict regulation in the Forges would eventually be dealt with in the Scientific Rights Decree of 10 BSC. The loss of centralized production caused a massive shift in the functioning of the cargo arms of the Ember Navy and Air Force. Initially, many air crews complained at the vastly increased flight times required to transport material to and from the forges. However, the vast decrease in loss of noncombatant personnel transporting materiel to the front was welcomed. The growing use of optigraphic communications systems served to ease the strain on a system which was undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift.
Though the original intent had been for homogeneity among the Forges, the distributed system evolved into a sort of pseudo-specialization. While each maintained the information and basic facilities of all the others, the various forges began to move towards vastly increased focus on one specific skill-set. Though many, including Ahnah, protested this change and sought to legislate the forges back towards equilibrium, the end of the Schism in an apparent Ember group victory only further the growth of specialization and customization. The need for new communications and civilian technologies, as well as the scaling-down of war production, led to the growth of new, civilian-focused forges, which often unified with or were absorbed by their larger counterparts. While the Interbellum period between the end of the Schism and the beginning of the Restabilizing War was a period of massive technological and societal advancement for the Group, it also saw the Forges grow to become semi-independent units of their own, comparable in some ways to the larger crown corporations in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation.
[...]
[Excerpt from Appendix E of the same work]
The major forges of the Interbellum and pre-Res War period (72BSC-2ASC)
Overlord
Buried in a coal vein deep beneath the Owl's Nest in the Si Wong desert, Overlord was initially the Overlord Initiative (est. 106 BSC), founded with the goal of refining Earth Kingdom psyche-alteration and indoctrination techniques. Specifically operating in an 'ethics-optional' environment, Overlord created the systems of rapid psychological stabilization and training that would characterize the Ember Group for decades to come. This Forge was placed in a state of indefinite suspension when the extent of its 'human improvement' project came to light.
Dragon
Concealed within an extinguished volcano on the outskirts of the City of the Sun, the Dragon Forge came to specialize in the construction and field-testing of armoured land vehicles. Thanks to agreements with the Sun Warriors, the Forge was able to operate at massive rates of production without breaking concealment, mainly due to the absence of any real Fire Nation populations in the area. Frequently collaborating closely with Seafoam Forge, Dragon was responsible for the design and creation of the Dragon-series tanks, as well as prototyping work on early 'Powered Harness' assisted-exoskeleton technology. This group was the largest by personnel and budget of the three so-called 'Machine Forges', all founded by Fire Nation engineers.
Serpent
The second-largest of all the Forges by size, Serpent Forge was located on the seabed at the center of Chameleon Bay. Though often called a Machine Forge, Serpent was unusual in that it consistently rejected this designation. One of the most multicultural forges, Serpent included teams of researchers from all 4 nations in its development of the Ember Group's mostly-submersible navy. They were also crucial in early work on the ballistic rocketry which would later come to characterize the Ember Group space program.
Snake
The second of the Machine Forges, Snake was built into the ruins of the Southern Air Temple, where it served as the development hub for airship, and, near the end of the Res War, airfoil research. Initially populated mostly by Firebenders, the population of Serpent slowly evolved until it was mostly Airbenders. In the Year of the Comet, Snake was host to an unexpected visit by the Avatar, who came extremely close to compromising the Forge's existence. Fortunately, the group was not discovered, and restoration efforts to the temple's Genocide Memorial were successful. Snake forge is notable for its very much Airbender-inspired sense of popular democracy. Even after the end of the Res War, Snake Forge residents were still petitioning for it to be renamed to something more 'Airbender-friendly'.
Seafoam
Hydraulics and pneumatics specialists, the South-Pole located Seafoam Forge was often called the glue that held the other forges together. Inventors of the steam projector, recirculating pneumatics, the modern steam turbine, and numerous other vital technologies, Seafoam was in constant contact with the other Forges, exchanging information and collaborating on the development of most of the Ember Group's heavy machinery.
Root
Located in the fertile river delta across the Northern Strait from the Western Air Temple, Root Forge was the largest of the Forges by size. Focusing solely on civilian technologies, they developed the basis for hydroponic farming, and were responsible for the inception of most modern farming technologies. Root was notable for its extremely high population of Earthbenders, as well as its somewhat unusual tactic of recruiting Earth Kingdom peasants as paid labourers.
Stargazer
Built into the top of Mount Stargazer to the southwest of the Eastern Air Temple, Stargazer Forge occupied itself with communications technology, as well as Operation Skyhook, the early name for the Ember Group Space Initiative. Stargazer was populated mostly by Separatist Airbenders who had left the Nomads long before the Genocide. The vast differences in political, cultural, and even linguistic mores within the Forge's population led to its famous reputation as an extremely competitive environment. After the end of the Res War, Stargazer Forge would remain the centre of the global Space Program, out-shadowing even the Republic City Space Agency.