The Tideborn Compact is a diaspora heritage militia representing the descendants of Pacific Island nations lost to rising sea levels during the 21st and 22nd centuries -- Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, parts of Fiji, Tonga, and dozens of smaller island communities whose names survive only in the memories of their displaced populations. The Compact exists to preserve the cultural identities of these drowned nations, protect their displaced communities within GLMZ, and pursue recognition and reparations from the corporate entities whose industrial ancestors contributed to the climate catastrophe that destroyed their homelands.

The Compact was formalized in 2167 after a series of violent confrontations between Pacific Islander communities in the Shelf and corporate development teams attempting to demolish the cultural district known as Little Oceania -- a cluster of Shelf neighborhoods where displaced islander families had recreated fragments of their lost homelands through architecture, language, food, and ceremony. When Crucible Industries announced plans to raze Little Oceania for an industrial expansion, the communities organized into a militia that physically blocked demolition equipment for thirty-seven days. Crucible eventually rerouted the expansion, and the resistance crystallized into the Tideborn Compact -- an organization dedicated to ensuring that no corporate interest would ever again threaten what remained of their cultures.

The Compact maintains approximately 2,200 active militia members trained in both combat and cultural preservation. Every member learns to fight, but every member also learns at least one traditional skill -- navigation by stars, traditional boat building, oral history, ceremonial practice, or one of the fourteen surviving Pacific languages spoken within the Compact. The organization operates on the principle that cultural survival and physical defense are inseparable -- that a people who cannot protect their neighborhood cannot protect their identity, and a people who forget their identity have nothing worth protecting.