What is the Resistance, anyway?
Black Sand canon.
Basically, it started out when Ross, who has more money than God* purchased what is basically Hawaii, only a mile offshore from the South America equivalent. He set up home on Maui, which is the closest Island, and maintained Neutral towards every side except general goodwill to the locals.
At the beginning of the plot, the "Banana Republic" trope was in full force, armed and funded by the American analog. One group of indigenous people who had Dragon blood and such, began fighting. Think "Zapatistas" if you want an idea, with a married couple as the "visible" leadership if you want the general idea.
Over time, Ross and the Black Sand patrons ended up on the side of the rebels because the People's Republic thought "Hey, you know what the best solution to keep the insanely rich gun running drug lord / visiting wizard monarch and his group of cheerfully ultraviolet friends consisting of mercenaries, celebrity fighters, assassins, and wanted criminals, most of whom have powers and are beyond or not even human, from being a threat to us? Yeah, let's kidnap his daughter and the loved ones of most of those friends and threaten to kill them unless they give in. "
As you can imagine, that backfired
spectacularly, to the point of" "on a scale from 1-10 of how terrible your idea is, this is equal to "invade Russia in winter" or "reject an ex Soldier from art school."
The immediate response was to arm and fund the rebels, and to mount an immediate rescue operation directly to the military base in question. And to wreck all the shit, too.
After that? Hit and run raids on strategic targets. Fighting off invasions. Straight up war, in urban and other areas. At one point the Black Sand patrons liberated Puerto Diablo, the nearby city, by staging an illegal protest rock concert, handing out literal tons of booze, drugs, and weapons, and using assorted mind and crowd control powers to get the amped up, pissed off crowd to throw a huge fucking riot.
After it all settled, quite a few patrons physically helped with rebuilding. Ross donated a hospital and shit, others helped with rescue, others did heavy lifting, one character designed an entirely new geothermal power plant and hired entirely local crew to build it, etc.
The overall public opinion is "Yeah, they're a bunch of dangerous lunatic criminals who regularly endanger our community / planet / universe, but they're
our psychos, they tend to save the world, they pay really well, and the benefits are amazing. Plus, we can actually vote, so there's that. "
* appropriate net worth: 157,455,000,000,000,000
Note: personal wealth. This does not represent the Vernal family wealth, which is considerably higher. He's considered moderately wealthy in the Vernal family and the Spring Court. In the Unseelie High Court as a whole, his wealth is that of the middle class. Such gossip.
Edit : Even some plain human patrons solo'd
tanks. A brother sister pair of a sniper and engineer (the very same one who did the geothermal plant) took out an entire column of tanks with a dirt bike, plastiques, grenades, one RPG, and assault weaponry. Yes, they did get shot and did live.