Tyrants seldom come to us openly, hands dripping with the blood of innocent victims. More often than not they appear as tireless friends of the people, individual receptacles of virtue, ready to save us from ourselves. Let it be recalled, however, that the King's Justice is just as often the proud foot of the oppressor. In the end, we ourselves are to blame for receiving him with open arms, in the end, we have deceived ourselves. 
-Chancellor Mica Liao, excerpt from inauguration speech, 2530End Data Transmission. 

All my life, the Capellan Confederation has loomed large in my awareness. My mother, my homeworld, every planet over which my family has stewardship-all these were part of the Confederation once, until the Fourth Succession War freed my mother and her duchy from any obligation to her mad family. We Liaos can be less than stable, and the mad ones among us are not truly capable of ruling. They cannot place the people before their own desire for power. My mother, Candace, escaped this taint. I like to think that my siblings and I did as well. Now, with Sun-Tzu Liao and his Confederation once again our overlord, we can only pray our sanity will see us through.

My family remains as it always has-ruling over the worlds of St. Ives. For a time, Sun-Tzu had renamed it the Xin Sheng Commonality. Xin Sheng means "new birth," the name Sun-Tzu chose to prettify his wars of conquest. Now, however, our true name has been restored to us, even if our freedom has not. First against the Federated Commonwealth, retaking former Capellan possessions lost in the Fourth Succession War; next against the planets his own actions had thrown into turmoil, in the so-called Chaos March; and finally against the St. Ives Compact, my home. He took all these worlds for the good of the Capellan Confederation-the entire Capellan Confederation, including those parts of it that no longer wished to be-or so he says. Perhaps he even believes it. Personally, I question what good is wrought by destroying a planet's cities and lands and killing its people in order to fly a different flag over it. If Sun-Tzu truly cared for our good, he would have left us alone.

Be that as it may, we have rejoined the Confederation. Not easily or willingly, but the deed is done. During my travels along our former border, I have gone among the common people and dealt with the military authorities. I have also learned all I could about the way life is lived on Capellan worlds outside St. Ives, so that I might give our people some idea of what to expect.

Euphoria buoys the Confederation now, a sweeping sense of having finally triumphed in its long struggle for survival. We Capellans-all of us-are nothing if not a patient people; we know how to work together for a goal whose attainment may take years, even lifetimes. Sun-Tzu has this patience in full. It enabled him to take back St. Ives and many other once-Capellan planets. The people of St. Ives also have it, which gives me hope that our recent defeat is not the end of our story. Patience, dedication, attention to detail and a healthy degree of cunning are the birthrights of all Capellans, no matter which side of our former border they call home. These qualities come out in our art-the long years of painstaking craftsmanship to create a leaf from thin layers of red lacquer. They come out in our politics-not even the Draconis Combine excels us in the art of subtle intrigue. And they come out in war-the slow but steady revival of a badly weakened military, the sowing of rebellions that flower among enemies at just the right time, the knowledge of when to strike and when to hold back.

For the moment, it is the Confederation that finds its patience rewarded. The common people, used to privation for centuries even before the Fourth Succession War sundered their realm, raise little objection to the further hardships many of them are suffering while their Chancellor and his ministers spend huge sums rebuilding newly conquered planets. It helps that not all the rebuilding is taking place in St. Ives or the reclaimed Chaos March worlds. Under Xin Sheng, bulldozers and wrecking balls are trundling through the streets of some of the worst slums on various planets, with new housing going up in their wake. Every tenement block has a Chinese touch-mock pagoda roofs, carved dragons over the doors, windows and archways and plumbing all aligned for fortunate feng shui. Shì-Zhong-Xin Park in the capital on Denbar, torn to pieces by a fierce 'Mech battle, has been perfectly restored. Refugees from St. Ives border worlds who fled deeper into the Compact are beginning to go home-somewhat wary of trusting the Chancellor's assurances that they are safe from persecution, but having little other choice. So far, Sun-Tzu has been as good as his word. I have heard no reports of arrests, or even of special Maskirovka attention being paid to returnees. That we must once again fear the Capellan secret police, however, is a dark spot on the brightness of Xin Sheng. We can only wait to see how large it grows.

On Indicass, another St. Ives border planet that saw fierce fighting, the latest public beautification project is a portrait of Chancellor Sun-Tzu. It covers an entire wall of the Government House in the capital city. Such portraits are becoming increasingly common on potentially troublesome worlds. Reminders, I assume, of who truly holds sovereignty over us now. My mother described such portraits of her father, Chancellor Maximilian, and her elder sister Romano. Most citizens kept smaller versions in their houses or apartments, carefully placed for display. I am told that nowadays, many make altars of Sun-Tzu's portrait; burning joss sticks and praying for blessings from the man some call Enlightened One. Reclaimer of lost worlds, First Lord of the Star League, Conqueror of the Clans … Sun-Tzu has given his people their pride back, a precious gift. Even those who know him to be merely human rather than demigod cannot help but be grateful.

Sun-Tzu's popularity is one force behind the "Chinese renaissance" sweeping the realm. Things Chinese are in vogue, from architecture to 'Mech designs to food. The Liao family's prominence since the Capellan nation's early days guaranteed our Han Chinese heritage a dominant place in Confederation life, but my cousin has turned that privileged position into virtual cultural hegemony. He finds Chinese symbolism useful to unify and inspire his subjects, and they accord him such near-worship that they follow his lead in all things. And so, more than ever in the Confederation's history, to be most truly Capellan is to be Chinese. Exhibits of Chinese art draw record crowds; producers of bright Chinese silks can scarcely keep ahead of the demand for robes and banners; restaurants known for indifferent kung pao are turning customers away, while Russian cafés, Indian restaurants and Japanese steakhouses go begging. There is even a burgeoning market in cosmetic surgery to "Asian-ize" round eyes.

None of this need be worrisome in itself. Ethnic pride can be a comfort to those who are suffering, and the recent war has brought suffering in spades. There are the war-torn worlds of St. Ives, families on both sides who lost loved ones to the fighting, and the myriad economic troubles of reintegration. These things touch many people, one way or another. 

For some, however, pride in being Chinese also means suspicion of anything-or anyone-different. This disturbing trend has already shown itself in St. Ives; how entrenched it may be in the rest of the Confederation, I cannot guess. Throughout our recent war, and now as uneasy peace begins to take hold, I organized relief efforts for the common people: refugee camps, soup kitchens, medical clinics and the like. Initially, local military authorities gave me little trouble. Whatever I needed, I got, often with a pointed comment about how much the Chancellor valued my efforts. Now, as a genuine peace treaty replaces the cease-fires, some authorities are becoming difficult. I ran afoul of one such in Qingliu on Hustaing, where hard-fought combat devastated the Russian sector of the city of Chiangmai. We established a clinic and feeding center on the outskirts of the area, as near could be managed to its displaced inhabitants. The Chancellor set up his own relief efforts some days afterward, all in predominantly Chinese areas of town. I thought little of it at the time. Everyone needed help, no matter what their ethnic origin. 

In recent weeks, however, my Russian-sector clinic began to run short of medicines. When I asked the Chancellor's people what they could spare, they seemed willing to help-but the commander of the unit occupying Chiangmai threw up roadblock after roadblock. All plausible, seemingly innocent, but too many for coincidence. When I went to see him about the problem, he told me coldly that he did not approve of Capellan resources being used to aid "foreign elements." "Your face marks you as a true Capellan, a daughter of the Han," he went on to say. "Why does your heart trouble itself over the lives of a few round-eyes?"

I could not answer him. I knew it would do no good to say that the people of Chiangmai were all Capellans, having been made so by his own victory-and by the edicts of his Chancellor, who is not so foolish as to give the new-conquered masses an excuse for another rebellion. I believe-I hope-that such bigotry is not widespread or officially sanctioned. But the cost of rebuilding the very worlds Sun-Tzu's war tore apart must be placing great strain on the Confederation treasury, which means more hardship for the people. On the surface, our fellow Capellans welcomes us as long-lost brothers and sisters. Caught up in victory, they grudge St. Ives nothing. Underneath, however, resentments are surely simmering. If national pride and habitual obedience to their Chancellor preclude open hostility toward St. Ives as a whole, those among us who are insufficiently "Capellan"-Chinese-may become substitute targets. 

Xin Sheng cannot lacquer over this or other darker parts of Capellan society. The Maskirovka are omnipresent, scenting out real or imagined disloyalties among every class and caste. Expressing anything less than complete admiration for the Chancellor, House Liao or one's local ruling noble can make a Capellan citizen vanish without a trace. I am told that in Chancellor Romano's day, "disloyal" citizens were frequently shot while trying to escape; when projectile weapons were used, the central government sent the family a bill for the fatal bullet. It would not surprise me to know this is still common practice. Thus far, the apparent general amnesty for St. Ives citizens seems to be holding. I wonder how long it will last. Until Sun-Tzu's patience thins, or until the Star League is no longer looking our way? With the civil war brewing between the two halves of the Federated Commonwealth, I fear we will not have the Star League's attention much longer.

Whatever our fate is to be, for now we can only accept it. For better or worse, we are once again citizens of the Capellan Confederation. Of a realm in which every shadow may have ears, and citizens learn to fear the knock in the middle of the night. A realm where fierce pride in being Capellan springs from terror of absorption by larger, more powerful nations. A realm where the quality of one's life is determined not by laws applying to all, but by the personal virtues or vices of this or that ruling noble. A nation summed up by the deadly beauty of a T'i Tsang BattleMech-its graces, courage and strength all turned toward war. But Capellan heritage is more than these things. We of St. Ives remember when the Capellan nation was a beacon of freedom to the rest of humanity. Though it may take more lifetimes than my own, we will restore that freedom to our fellow Capellans-little by little, year by year. 

They believe they have reclaimed us. It is my hope that we have reclaimed them. 

-Duchess Kuan-Yin Allard-Liao
 

Origins and History

The Capellan Confederation came together under the threat of military occupation by an enemy power, and nearly died in its first year under assaults from two different foes. Not surprisingly, absorption by a foreign nation is the greatest fear of the Capellans and their Liao rulers. Political instability runs a close second, as a divided realm is also a weak one. Ever since Franco Liao took control of the fragmented Capellan states, House Liao has done its utmost to create and preserve a nation where the political chain of command is unquestioned and the Liao family stands indisputably at the top. Only through ironclad internal stability could the worlds in this oft-contested region of space hope to survive the attentions of their larger and militarily more powerful neighbors.

Republic and Hegemony

The two principal powers among the so-called Capellan states of the late twenty-third and early twenty-fourth centuries were the Capellan Hegemony and the Liao Republic. At the dawn of the twenty-fourth century, anyone placing bets on the future of these powers likely would have chosen the Hegemony. Founded by plebiscite in 2270, the Hegemony centered on the planet Capella, renowned throughout human-occupied space for its vast libraries and storehouses of information. Capella had previously been the heart of the Capellan Co-Prosperity Sphere, a loose defense and trade pact that encompassed several neighboring worlds. The Hegemony declaration gave membership in the new state to all original members of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, as well as to all inhabited planets within ten light-years of Capella. For the next three decades, the Capellan Hegemony expanded its holdings and solidified its reputation as the mercantile and cultural center of the region.

The Republic of Liao, then a single planet, spent those same years struggling out of an economic pit dug for it by the Nanking Collective, which blockaded Liao in 2249 in a brief but nasty trade dispute. The blockade cost Liao the export contracts with nearby worlds that had been the source of its prosperity. Within a decade of the Blockade of '49, Liao had gone from creditor to debtor world, with some settlements on the edge of starvation. The tiny republic's fortunes slowly picked up over the last decades of the twenty-third century, as its leaders worked tirelessly to restore trading agreements and rebuild their merchant fleet. Fortunately, the demand for Liao's principal exports-livestock, processed meat and grain-remained high enough to gradually set the planetary economy back on its feet. Liao thoroughbred horses had long been a favorite luxury of rich colonials and the emerging noble classes on many worlds; with the planet's gradual economic revival, the horse trade started up again, bringing in additional profit. By the beginning of the Capellan-Supremacy War in 2305, the Republic of Liao had recovered enough for its leaders to consider expanding beyond their world's horizons. 

The Capellan-Supremacy war capped years of simmering hostility between the Hegemony and the Sarna Supremacy, an oppressive military power with grandiose designs of conquering the entire Capellan region. Soon after Capella's first colonists landed, a Sarnese ship mistakenly attempted to intimidate them into acknowledging the Supremacy as their overlord. That early encounter set the pattern of relations between the Supremacy and the Capellan state for decades to come. After the formation of the Co-Prosperity Sphere foiled Sarnese dreams of military conquest, it resorted to economic warfare. The Supremacy imposed a blanket economic boycott of the Capellan Hegemony from 2270 until 2282, by which time Sarnese leaders realized that the sanctions were hurting their own realm more than their enemy's. As the Hegemony added more and more star systems throughout the 2280s and '90s, its expanding territories moved ever closer to the Supremacy's borders, raising tensions between the two powers. By the turn of the twenty-fourth century, war was a diplomatic incident away.

In 2305, the Sarnese systems of Palos and Wei broke from the Supremacy and declared independence. Knowing the Capellans had little love for the Sarnese, the leaders of the breakaway systems appealed for aid to Capellan garrisons on nearby St. Andre and Tsitsang. Spoiling for a fight with the Sarnese "evil empire" and eager to acquire the disputed planets' considerable metal and mineral deposits, Magnate Paula Aris of the Capellan Hegemony declared war against the Supremacy. 

Capellan patriotism and skill unfortunately proved no match for the Supremacy's sheer numbers or its skillful use of paid pirates to draw off crack Capellan units. With the help of troops from the Free Worlds League-which had its own designs on the Supremacy-the Capellans managed to take and hold seventeen Sarnese planets between late 2307 and 2308. Fierce popular resistance on many of those worlds, however, cost the Capellans shocking numbers of casualties. The Hegemony government on Capella responded with large-scale emergency draft legislation and heavy new taxes to pay for training and equipping the recruits. These draconian measures took their toll on Hegemony client worlds, until one of them finally rebelled. 

In December of 2308, the planet Arboris officially withdrew from the Capellan Hegemony. The Hegemony's Second Andurien Reserve Fleet headed toward the rebel world, passing near the planet Liao-a choice of route whose unexpected repercussions would sharply raise the Liao Republic's fortunes while sinking the Hegemony's. Upon entering the Liao system, the Second Andurien found its way blocked by a fleet of armed merchant vessels. The merchant fleet's commander, Emile Faulkner Liao, informed the Capellans that Arboris had requested protectorate status under the neutrality laws of the Liao Republic. The Capellan fleet fought the Liao ships and won, but the victory proved costly. Rather than continue toward Arboris, the unnerved Capellan commander left his fleet blockading Liao while he returned to Capella for fresh orders. This dithering did not impress the Free Worlds League, which abruptly withdrew from the Capellan alliance. Without League military aid, the Capellan Hegemony could not hope to hold the Sarnese territory it had gained.

Magnate Paula Aris bowed to the inevitable in 2309 and signed an armistice mediated by the neutral Tikonov Grand Union. The treaty mandated the dissolution of the Capellan Hegemony government; the Magnate's subsequent suicide and popular dissatisfaction did the rest. Within months of the war's end, the plutocrats of the Hegemony had been replaced by a republican government. The new regime, renamed the Capellan Commonality, squandered its honeymoon period in squabbling and political gridlock, while the nation grew poorer and weaker.

The Commonality reached its nadir a mere decade after its birth, when the politicized, underequipped and demoralized Capellan army failed to prevent Terran Hegemony troops from landing on Capella. Between 2320 and 2335, the capital of the Commonality belonged to the Terran Hegemony, with the active collaboration of several leading local politicians. It should be noted that, following a long-standing tradition of selective memory where major defeats are concerned, the Capellan government has never officially acknowledged the Terran occupation in any document produced for public consumption.

Capella's common people were less easily cowed. The Free Capella Underground, a shadowy organization of civilian resisters and disaffected soldiers, relentlessly harassed the Terran Hegemony forces from the first year of the occupation, using every tactic from street protests to bombings to selective assassination of Terran officers. Eventually, the guerrilla campaign made the price of staying too high. Rather than keep his units bogged down where they could be picked off one by one, Hegemony leader James McKenna left Capella to its own devices. After the Hegemony's departure in 2335, the Commonality government limped along for thirty more years before breaking down amid widespread rioting and apathy.

During this same period, the Republic of Liao rose steadily in power and prestige. Four more star systems followed Arboris' lead between 2310 and 2320: Zurich, Aldebaran, Genoa and Gan Singh. By 2356, the renamed Duchy of Liao also owned an impressively large merchant marine force. The huge Liao fleet allowed the Republic to replace the Capellan Commonality as the region's primary mercantile power, further enriching the former at the expense of the latter. By the 2360s, the Duchy of Liao was the strongest of all the Capellan nations and the only one capable of uniting them in the face of a looming foreign menace.

Birth of the Confederation

The various Capellan states faced potential military action on two fronts. James McKenna had captured eleven star systems in the Capellan region by 2335; not surprisingly, the remaining Capellan powers distrusted his apparent shift toward diplomacy later in that decade. Closer to home, the young Federated Suns saw Capellan disarray as the perfect excuse for empire building. In 2357, Fed Suns President Reynard Davion sent troops to occupy the Sarnese world of Bell. This action touched off a border war that alternately flared and ebbed over the next decade and a half. In 2366, with the Capellan Commonality clearly on its last legs, Reynard saw a chance to annex that entire realm. Citing the collapse of the Commonality government, he announced his intention to send "peacekeeping troops" to occupy Capella "until a suitable governing body is elected." This thinly veiled threat of absorption threw the Capellan states into panic. When Duke Franco Liao proposed a pan-Capellan union with the Duchy of Liao as its principal seat of power, few of his compatriots felt inclined to quibble. Duke Franco proclaimed the creation of the Capellan Confederation in July of 2366, with himself as its supreme Chancellor.

Knowing that a strong defense was vital, Chancellor Franco appointed ten military commanders for each component state of the Confederation and gave them sweeping powers within their newly christened commonalities. These de facto military governors immediately began raising and training an army for the battle they knew would come. In July of 2367, word reached the infant Confederation that Federated Suns troops were less than a parsec away from Capella. Chancellor Franco hurriedly assembled elite units from all ten commonalities, meanwhile opening negotiations with the Fed Suns commander as a ploy to gain time. The looming invasion would be the Capellan Confederation's baptism by fire. Only if Franco's bold gamble worked would his young realm survive.

Less than three weeks after they began, the negotiations broke down. The Chancellor assembled his troops in space near Capella, out of sight of the would-be invaders, and waited for the Fed Suns units to drop on the undefended Confederation capital. The Federated Suns took the bait. Within twenty-four hours, elements of the Sarna and St. Ives navies, along with armed Liao merchantmen, destroyed the enemy troop transports and supply ships in a titanic seven-hour engagement. Having proved the worth of his thrown-together Confederation Navy, Chancellor Liao demanded the enemy's immediate and unconditional surrender. The Fed Suns commander refused. Minutes later, the Confederation Navy razed Capella's capital city to the ground. Two thousand Capellan citizens lost their lives, along with every man and woman of the occupying force. The Capellans' sacrifice proved in no uncertain terms just how determined they were to resist foreign domination. Defeated and unnerved, the Federated Suns backed off. In a final show of defiance, Reynard Davion refused to recognize the Confederation. His son Etien Davion, however, did so soon after his accession to power in 2371.

The Confederation's savage triumph over the Federated Suns was one of the few victories it could claim in its early years. Between 2366 and 2369, the Free Worlds League took the Capellan border systems of Berenson, Zion, Shiro, Hassad and Andurien. These worlds changed hands multiple times over the next two decades, until exhaustion on both sides prompted an unofficial armistice in the 2390s. The cease-fire lasted until 2398, when Chancellor Kurnath Liao launched the first of many wars over the water-rich Andurien systems. This assault inaugurated the period of savage conflict later known as the Age of War. Though this first attempt to retake Andurien ended in failure, those planets would remain a bone of bitter contention between the Confederation and the Free Worlds League for much of the two realms' mutual history. 

The Age of War's most vicious phase ended less than two decades after it began, with the signing of the Ares Conventions in 2412. The brainchild of Chancellor Aleisha Liao, the Conventions forbade the use of weapons of mass slaughter, such as those that had massacred the population of Tintavel earlier that same year. By intentionally limiting the scope of the damage combatants could do, the Ares Conventions cut down on the shocking losses of civilian lives. By lowering war's cost, however, they also made it more acceptable-an outcome that would have appalled their author. At the time, however, the signing of the Conventions by every major Inner Sphere power seemed to symbolize a new beginning for the Capellan Confederation. The Ares Summit took place on a Confederation world, under the aegis of House Liao, to ratify a historic document conceived of and written by the Capellan Chancellor. The worst excesses of the Age of War were relegated to the past, recent losses and uncertainties set aside in favor of the brighter future that must surely come. The Confederation had survived assaults from multiple outside enemies; the new century seemed poised to bring peace and prosperity to this struggling nation. No one anticipated that the Confederation's next great enemy would come from within.

A House Divided

After Aleisha Liao's death in 2415, the Chancellorship passed to Arden Baxter, a prominent member of the advisory council known as the Prefectorate. The first Chancellor not connected to House Liao, Baxter presided over a reign so disastrous that it reinforced intense loyalty to House Liao in subsequent generations. Though he spent only ten years in office before an assassin's bullet cut him down, Arden Baxter came close to destroying the Confederation-an outcome he devoutly desired and for which he actively worked.

Baxter was connected to the Aris family, leaders of the Capellan Hegemony until after the Capellan Supremacy War. During the Commonality era, the Aris clan clawed its way back to political power by every avenue it could, determined to topple or take over the Commonality government. When that government collapsed in 2366 amid a welter of corruption, foreign interference and domestic unrest, industrial magnate Warren Aris prepared to take control. Duke Franco Liao, however, forestalled him. The duke's arrival on Capella and his bold proposal to form the Capellan Confederation won far more backers among the leaders of Capellan worlds than anything Aris could offer, particularly after Liao threatened a trade embargo against any world that backed the Aris faction. Offered the position of Deputy Chancellor in the new Confederation government, Warren Aris refused it, whereupon Duke Franco had him arrested as a disturber of the peace. The Aris family never recovered from that blow to its power, nor did their many supporters. One such was Arden Baxter's father, a staunch backer of Warren Aris to the bitter end. Geoffrey Baxter died a broken and ruined man in 2378, leaving his son a legacy of shattered dreams and a pathological hatred of the Liaos and all their works. 

Over the next thirty-odd years, Arden Baxter nursed his grudge and hoarded power. In 2410, he was appointed to the noble House of Scions under an amnesty for past political prisoners. He milked this opportunity for all it was worth, playing the reformed sinner to the hilt and slowly building a power base. Hard work and bribery earned him a seat on the Prefectorate in 2415, just two months before Chancellor Aleisha's death. Baxter subsequently convinced his fellow councilors that his appointment as Chancellor would heal old wounds and bolster unity in the realm. In reality, Baxter planned to tear apart "this bastard Liao state."

His first target was the Capellan military, foundation of the Liao family as well as the Confederation's strength. Over the next nine years, he reduced the Capellan Armed Forces and fired scores of talented generals with pro-Liao leanings. In 2418, Baxter embroiled this unsettled and slowly dwindling military in the Taurian-Rimwards War, a vicious three-year conflict with several small states on the Confederation's Periphery border. The Taurian states had never signed the Ares Conventions, and the fighting on both sides caused skyrocketing civilian as well as military casualties. The Confederation ultimately captured two planets, a poor return for the decimation of its rimward worlds and military units. 

Baxter's domestic schemes fared less well. His covert "popular front" movements, aimed at discrediting House Liao, fizzled like a damp squib on most worlds. On several occassions, massive pro-Liao counter-demonstrations made it necessary to call in riot troops. The Chancellor's gravest offense against the Confederation, however, was his deliberate squandering of a golden opportunity to mend fences with the Federated Suns. Though few Capellan citizens recognized the consequences at the time, Baxter was intelligent enough to know where genuine détente with a powerful former enemy might lead. He therefore chose to deny the Confederation the potential benefits of such a peace, and in so doing shaped Inner Sphere history for centuries to come.

Simon Davion had taken power in the Federated Suns in 2418, ending nearly five decades of corrupt and increasingly tyrannical rule. As part of ushering in a new era for his nation, the new Davion prince attempted to heal the long-standing breach between the Suns and the Capellans. He sent envoys to the Confederation capital of Sian early in his reign, but Baxter refused to recognize them. Instead, the Chancellor called them "toadies of a murderer pretending to legitimacy," and ordered his household guard to throw them out. Mere weeks later, he followed this insult with an offer to recognize the new Davion government in exchange for the border worlds of Lee, Redfield and Safe Port. All three planets had long been subjects of fierce dispute between Capellan powers and the Federated Suns, falling to the latter during the border wars of the 2360s. The Federated Suns was in no mood to give back what it had bought with blood less than fifty years earlier. Chancellor Baxter's outrageous demands came close to starting another Fed Suns-Capellan border war, and permanently destroyed any chance of friendship between the two nations.

Given subsequent Confederation history, Baxter's deliberate snubbing of Davion peace overtures seems horribly prescient. The ensuing centuries of hostility would eventually culminate in the Fourth Succession War, which split the Confederation in half and nearly spelled its demise as a major Inner Sphere power. 

Liao Restoration

The damage done by Arden Baxter unfortunately did not end with his death. His successor, Stephen Liao, proved nearly as disastrous a ruler for entirely different reasons. Stephen was determined to restore the nation his forefathers had built, starting with the Capellan military. Arden Baxter's malicious bungling of foreign affairs had greatly increased tensions between the Confederation and its neighbors, raising the odds of attack on several fronts. In such a situation, a weakened military was a virtual invitation to invade.

The new Chancellor wasted no time in revamping his armed forces, launching hugely expensive training and rearmament programs throughout the 2430s and 40s. To pay for the improvements, Stephen first siphoned funds from the nobility and then imposed increasingly hefty taxes throughout Capellan society. The overwhelming devotion of resources to the military left long-neglected domestic problems untouched. They grew and festered, while the common people grumbled about the indifference of their leaders. The pervasive presence of the Maskirovka, beefed up by Stephen as part of the military, kept popular discontent at a low boil. The discontent of the nobles, many of whom came perilously close to bankruptcy as a result of the military build-up, was less easily dealt with. It exploded into violence after Stephen's death in 2450, in a dire crisis known to Capellan history as the Time of Tribulations.

The enormous sums spent on the military throughout Stephen Liao's reign allowed several high-ranking officers to accumulate vast personal wealth and power. Among the most prominent of these was General Merik, commander of a regiment in the elite Capellan Hussars. A gifted tactician with charisma to match, Merik seemed the most likely to attempt a grab for supreme power. Stephen's son Duncan Liao, a youth of seventeen when he became Chancellor, sought to curb Merik's growing influence by halving the size of Merik's unit. The general and his troops responded with open revolt, occupying the Chancellor's winter palace and taking Duncan hostage.

For the next seven months, Merik's military junta ruled in Duncan's name while the House of Scions squabbled over the proper response. Some of its members favored rescuing Duncan and thereby placing the young Chancellor in their debt; others attempted to ingratiate themselves with General Merik. Rather than continue as a pawn in the power struggle, Duncan Liao committed suicide in 2452. 

Duncan's sister Jasmine blamed Merik and the House of Scions equally for her brother's death, and took action against both. Merik's Hussars were her first target. Within hours of proclaiming herself Chancellor, Jasmine Liao ordered the Second Hexare Lancers-afterward known as the Red Lancers-to capture the winter palace and annihilate Merik's troops. That task accomplished, Jasmine launched a purge of the military. The brutal housecleaning and accompanying reforms took two years and gave the Chancellor's office unprecedented control over the Capellan armed forces. Finally, Jasmine Liao set about acquiring similarly absolute political authority. Her most far-reaching addition to the Chancellor's powers was the right of decree, technically making the Chancellor's word law in loosely defined emergency situations. Jasmine and her successors exploited this right to the hilt, routinely using it to circumvent opposition. By the end of Jasmine's reign, the Chancellorship had become a position of supreme authority, with the House of Scions reduced to rubber-stamping the Chancellor's decisions.

Over the six decades between Arden Baxter's accession and Jasmine Liao's death, the Capellan Confederation completed its long journey from a collection of often-quarreling states with vastly different forms of government to a unified star empire ruled by an absolute autocrat. The change heralded a new era in Capellan nationhood, which had been marked throughout most of its two hundred years by chaos, internal upheavals, wars and brief intervals of peace. Between the founding of the Capellan Hegemony and the death of Chancellor Jasmine Liao, the Liao family brought the Capellan nation its longest periods of stability. The Capellan people came to value that stability at almost any price and to revere the Liaos who had given it to them. These two features of Capellan life would define and preserve it during the centuries to come, carrying the nation through the first Star League era and its tumultuous aftermath.

Era of Peace, Era of War

The Capellan Confederation joined the Star League in 2556, induced to do so by offers of favored-nation trade agreements with the Terran Hegemony, access to valuable Terran technologies, and a promise by Albert Marik of the Free Worlds League to cede to the Capellans the hotly disputed Andurien systems. The latter was the most valuable prize in the mind of Chancellor Terrence Liao, who had fought and lost the Third Andurien War just five years earlier. Badly battered by that conflict, the Capellan Confederation desperately needed peace. Its armies had been mauled, its treasuries depleted by war and reparations, and its people were sick of fighting. The Star League beckoned like an oasis in the desert, promising permanent relief from the Confederation's many troubles. The speedy transfer of Andurien proper to Confederation control seemed to symbolize the rewards of peace. Signing the Star League treaty brought the Confederation a coveted system it had failed to gain through war; possession of Andurien and its sister worlds would enlarge and enrich Capellan territory as few wars had done. (In fact, the remaining eleven Andurien systems never left Free Worlds control. After years of bureaucratic delays and snafus, both sides quietly dropped the matter.)

The ink was scarcely dry on the Star League Accords, however, when the Capellan Confederation and its fellow member-states found themselves embroiled in the Reunification War. This brutal conquest of the Periphery took more than twenty years, during which the economies of all the Star League realms became more or less dependent on wartime production. The Capellan economy, after years of battling over Andurien and heavy reparations paid to the Free Worlds League, was more vulnerable than most. The surge of wartime manufacturing revived it enough to compensate for the cost of the Capellan Armed Forces' own part in the conflict. When the Reunification War ended, however, the sudden loss of the Confederation's major source of revenue threw the economy into deep shock. 

Chancellor Normann Aris, elected by the Prefectorate to succeed the childless Ursula Liao in 2599, devised a unique solution to the fiscal crisis that remains a fixture in modern-day Capellan life. Aris put the Confederation's entire adult population to work under what he called "compulsory organization." This system made explicit a normally implicit part of the social contract-namely, that every Capellan owed the state some form of service in exchange for the privilege of citizenship. It also consolidated state control over Capellan citizens by allowing the state, rather than the individual, to dictate the nature of each person's service. 

Compulsory organization saved the Confederation from total economic collapse, but at the heavy price of eliminating an important personal freedom. Many citizens protested initially, some so stridently that the Capellan government sent troops to deal with them. Most Capellans, however, submitted to the new order with no more than a little grumbling. The economic crisis made them grateful for any employment that would keep food on the table, and the nation's history of upheavals had already taught them to value stability. Adjustment to the new reality was made easier by the connection of many Capellans to ancient Asian cultures with a mildly authoritarian bent. The tighter social structure would serve the Confederation well after the Star League's demise, which plunged humanity into three hundred years of a fruitless struggle for supremacy.

The Succession Wars

Never as large or powerful as its fellow Inner Sphere realms, the Capellan Confederation fared poorly during the long nightmare of the Succession Wars. The Lyran Commonwealth overshadowed it economically, the huge Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine militarily, the neighboring Free Worlds League in territory. Had its enemies not been fighting each other as well, the Confederation might have gone under. What kept the Capellan nation alive was the devotion of its people to their ruling house; the sheer fanaticism of Capellan troops, which enabled them to hang on and even triumph against desperate odds; and the cutthroat nature of combat during the first three Succession Wars, which virtually precluded alliances or even simple trust between the five major star empires. The Fourth Succession War was the only exception to the last, and it nearly proved the Confederation's undoing.

The First Succession War initially went well for the Capellans, who took over several worlds from the defunct Terran Hegemony before unleashing a devastating campaign on the Free Worlds League planet of New Delos. In her zeal for quick victory, Chancellor Barbara Liao authorized her forces to ignore the Ares Conventions-a decision that came back to haunt her. Sent reeling by the Capellans' first assault, the Free Worlds League swiftly rallied. Its troops attacked with redoubled ferocity, determined to punish the enemy that had taken so many civilian lives. The savage defeat inflicted on the Capellan navy over the League world of Calloway VI was the beginning of the end of Capellan good fortune. The League took four Capellan worlds in the early 2790s before events elsewhere in the Inner Sphere convinced each side to seek easier targets. 

The Capellan Armed Forces shifted its focus to poorly defended border planets in the Federated Suns, which had weakened its Capellan border garrisons under pressure from the Draconis Combine. By 2801, the Confederation was richer in territory by five Fed Suns worlds. It was also considerably poorer in military equipment and general revenues. The final Capellan campaign, on the world of Chesterton, cost the CCAF dearly in both manpower and military hardware. Weighed honestly, the Confederation lost more than it gained from the conflict-a pattern it would repeat in each of the three Succession Wars to come. 

By the end of the Third Succession War in the 2980s, the Capellan military teetered on the verge of collapse. Painstaking conservation of dwindling resources, a bedrock tenet of Capellan army doctrine since the Second Succession War, proved insufficient to keep the CCAF's 'Mechs and tanks and fighters in good working order. A few elite regiments and a handful of dedicated mercenary units were all that stood between the Confederation and oblivion, until the dawn of the thirty-first century brought a much-needed interlude of peace to the exhausted Successor States. Chancellor Maximilian Liao, who ascended the Celestial Throne in 2990, took the opportunity to rebuild his shattered military as best he could. Like his fellow Successor Lords, Maximilian assumed that conflict would flare up again before too many decades passed. He could not foresee, however, the dangerous difference between the Fourth Succession War and its predecessors.

The Fourth Succession War hinged on an unprecedented alliance between the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, which gave the Fed Suns vastly greater resources on which to draw while providing them with an ally to keep their other enemies busy. Prince Hanse Davion was therefore free to throw the bulk of his Fed Suns troops against his preferred target: the Capellan Confederation. Between 3028 and 3030, the Capellan Confederation lost more worlds than it had in all the previous Succession Wars: half its systems fell to the Davions. His realm split by his most hated enemy, Maximilian Liao succumbed to madness while his less-than-stable daughter Romano attempted to rebuild a shrunken, demoralized military and nation. The secession of the St. Ives Commonality at the end of the Fourth War further weakened the Confederation, bringing its fortunes to their lowest ebb in its history. Not until the accession of Sun-Tzu Liao in 3052 would this long-suffering realm begin emerging from the depths.

Capellan Revival 

The year 3052 would prove a turning point for the Capellan Confederation, though few within or outside that battered nation realized it at the time. In that year, the first phase of the Clan War ended in a Com Guards victory that bought the Inner Sphere fifteen precious years in which to narrow the Clans' prodigious technological advantage. Though Capellan territory lay far from the Clans' line of advance, even Romano Liao could not deny the threat they would pose should the other Successor States fall before them. Nor did her son, Sun-Tzu, fail to recognize the benefits of improved technology on other fields of war. Upon succeeding Romano as Chancellor later that same year, Sun-Tzu cast about for a political alliance that would let him put expected military developments to good use.

He found what he was looking for in a loose alliance with the Free Worlds League, whose Captain-General wanted a buffer against the still-impressive might of the Federated Commonwealth. The League and the Confederation had been allies of a sort under the Concord of Kapteyn, signed in 3022 by the leaders of Houses Marik, Liao and Kurita as a counterbalance to the Alliance Treaty. The Kapteyn agreement had done little for its members during the Fourth Succession War, but the precedent remained. Sun-Tzu Liao and Captain-General Thomas Marik revived and strengthened that tie, cementing it with an engagement between Sun-Tzu and Marik's illegitimate daughter, Isis. Though the marriage never took place, Sun-Tzu swiftly capitalized on his position as Marik's nominal son-in-law to wangle much-needed military aid and favorable trade agreements. He used both to beef up the Capellan Armed Forces while pressing Thomas Marik for open backing of Capellan military ventures.

From the start of his reign, Sun-Tzu was determined to take back every Capellan world lost to the FedCom in the Fourth Succession War. The alliance with the Free Worlds League potentially gave him the manpower to make that goal feasible, if he could persuade Thomas Marik to put League units at the Confederation's disposal. Marik, however, initially balked at aiding his new ally so directly. To achieve his dream of making the Confederation whole again, Sun-Tzu had to overcome Marik's reluctance.

His chance came in 3057, when Marik's son Joshua died of leukemia at the New Avalon Institute of Science. Around the time of the boy's death, Sun-Tzu engineered a commando raid on the NAIS. He intended to find or manufacture proof that the Joshua Marik at the facility was not Thomas' son, but an impostor. Unknown to the Chancellor, his guess was correct. Archon Prince Victor Steiner-Davion had substituted a double for the boy, fearing that the loss of the Marik heir would make the expansionist-minded Capellan Chancellor the new heir to the League throne. With control or near-control over two Successor State armies, Prince Victor believed, Sun-Tzu was almost certain to plunge the Inner Sphere into a war it could ill afford while the Clans sat on its doorstep.

As Sun-Tzu prepared to bring evidence of the switch to Thomas Marik, fate played into his hands. Through operatives of SAFE, the Free Worlds League intelligence agency, Marik learned of the substitution. He responded with an all-out attack on the Federated Commonwealth's Sarna March, in concert with the CAF. Sun-Tzu's war of reclamation had begun.

Over the two-month Liao-Marik Offensive, the Capellan army and Marik-hired mercenaries took back thirteen worlds and sowed chaos on many more. Between 3058 and 3061, Sun-Tzu took thirty more planets through a combination of military force, terrorist action and pro-Capellan popular movements he had spent years creating. The high point of the reclamation campaign was the reconquest of the St. Ives Compact, a hard-won Capellan victory fought over 3061 and most of 3062. Named the Xin Sheng Commonality during the war, the St. Ives Commonality came out of that war a shadow of its former self. The costs of rebuilding strife-torn worlds and reintegrating them into the Confederation will absorb significant Capellan resources for the next few years, leaving Sun-Tzu little time to continue the expansion of his realm. He is unlikely to rest, however, as long as any former Capellan possession lies outside the Confederation fold.

Within ten years, the Capellan Confederation has gone from a demoralized rump state to a rising power in a quickly changing Inner Sphere. In addition to reclaiming much of its lost territory, the Capellan nation achieved a crowning glory in 3058 when its Chancellor was chosen as First Lord of the new Star League-the first Successor State leader to hold that coveted title since the long-ago start of the Succession Wars. Though the First Lord's title and position have since rotated to Theodore Kurita of the Draconis Combine, the Capellan people still take immense pride in their own ruler's possession of it. Because of this and other achievements, the Confederation is once again a power to be reckoned with and its people cannot be too grateful to the Liao who made it happen.

Capellan Society

On the surface, Capellan society strongly resembles that of the Draconis Combine. Both realms favor a single Asian culture above all others: the Combine Japanese, the Confederation Chinese. Both incorporate a caste system, both submit their citizens to tight state control via heavy political indoctrination and a powerful internal security arm, and both foster fanatical loyalty to their respective ruling houses. Despite these important similarities, however, the two realms are far more different than outsiders might suspect. The average Capellan would certainly reject the notion that he is anything like a citizen of the Combine, or any other denizen of the Inner Sphere. Like the Chinese of old Terra from whom the Confederation draws its primary inspiration, the Capellan people see themselves as unique and their society as superior. Nowhere is this sense of superiority made more manifest than in the Xin Sheng movement, which has greatly strengthened the hold of ancient Chinese culture on the Capellan imagination.

Xin Sheng

Loosely translated as "new birth," this sweeping social and political movement is revitalizing Capellan society at every level. Launched by Sun-Tzu Liao near the beginning of his reign, Xin Sheng has brought the Capellan people increased prosperity, a degree of political freedom, considerable additional territory and a bracing sense of nationalist pride. After the dark years following the Fourth Succession War, this renewal seems even more miraculous. Much of it stands as inspiring testimony to the unconquerable human spirit. As with most things of human origin, however, Xin Sheng has its darker side as well.

On one level, Xin Sheng is about rebuilding the fortunes and the hopes of a nation all but shattered by war and the madness of its recent rulers. Economic reforms to encourage entrepreneurs have begun to raise living standards on once poor Capellan planets; on well-off planets like the capital of Sian, the bold and the lucky are making huge sums. Politically, Xin Sheng encourages planetary nobles to allow their subjects considerably more autonomy than many of them do. On some worlds, the ruling nobles are permitting elected civilian governments for the first time; on others, the planetary refrector as spokesman for the people is playing a larger part in policy decisions. The Maskirovka has standing orders to allow a certain amount of low-level dissent, though few are inclined to raise opposing voices amid the near-universal chorus of pride in Chancellor Sun-Tzu. Acclaimed by his people as conqueror of the Clans, First Lord of the Star League and author of every good fortune, Sun-Tzu has little to fear from a few lonely grumblings of discontent.

Militarily, the Xin Sheng movement has produced skyrocketing recruitment levels across the Confederation. Always among the most honored ways of serving the often-beleaguered Capellan state, military enlistment has acquired extra cachet since the victories of 3057 and the recent war against St. Ives. The respect accorded Capellan soldiers has never been higher, and scores of young people are clamoring for entrance to the nation's military academies. Particularly noticeable is the jump in recruitment among Capellans with no Chinese background. Xin Sheng's extreme identification of Capellan with Han Chinese identity leaves non-Chinese Capellans on the outside. Many attempt to compensate for this by proving their Capellan loyalty in the starkest way possible.

Han Chinese culture-language, arts, customs and mores-has always been among the brightest threads in the Capellan tapestry. Xin Sheng elevates things Chinese over all other cultural and social influences-in the Chancellor's own words, making the ways and heritage of old China "every Capellan's birthright." By explicitly linking Capellan identity with the culture from which his Liao ancestors sprang, Sun-Tzu is strengthening the psychological hold of the Liao dynasty over the Capellan people, as the embodiment of Chinese culture and virtues. So strongly emphasizing one way of life over others gives the people a sense of security and solidarity: they know who they are and how they are meant to live. Unfortunately, the same emphasis risks turning the "other" into the enemy. Though widespread discrimination against non-Chinese Capellans remains relatively rare, scattered rumors and anecdotes suggest that it may be on the rise. There is also the potential for a backlash against the former citizens of breakaway St. Ives, should the costs of its reabsorption become too great a burden. 

The St. Ives Conflict

The reintegration of the St. Ives region is the element of Xin Sheng that currently touches the largest number of ordinary Capellan lives. Thus far, joy over the Confederation's victory and reunification with its "lost cousins" has blunted the economic dislocations of the fighting and subsequent reconstruction. The ferocity of many battles cut deep into several Capellan army units; priority given to rebuilding them means fewer resources available elsewhere. The former St. Ives border worlds saw particularly savage fighting, and the costs of reconstruction there are running high. Relatively untouched St. Ives planets promise to add considerably to the Confederation treasury, and Sun-Tzu is canny enough to let all his people share at least a little in the new wealth. It will take a few years for the gains to materialize, however, much less trickle down to the ordinary citizen.

Then there are the people of St. Ives themselves-some happy to rejoin their Capellan brethren, most resigned to it, many others unable to accept the loss of their independence. For the latter, "new birth" has meant the death of their freedom, mourned all the more because they had it so briefly. The prospect of life under Confederation rule, with its rigid state controls and pervasive secret police, terrifies them. Many of them also find it inconceivable that "one of the crazy Liaos" will forgive them for having followed their beloved Duchess Candace thirty years ago. They believe a backlash is coming, but the restrictions of Capellan society make escaping it virtually impossible. Frightened, angry and grieving, their presence may spark unrest among the general Capellan population once the ecstasy of victory dies down.

For the moment, however, St. Ives is relatively calm. Duchess Candace and her family remain in power over the renamed St. Ives Commonality, a reassuring piece of continuity for many troubled citizens. The duchess has signaled her willingness to work with the central government for the good of her people, who currently need peace more than freedom. Given good faith on both sides and no unforeseen catastrophes, the reunion of St. Ives and its parent nation should proceed to the good of both.

State and Individual

With its history of autocratic rule, intense fear of dissolution and tradition of loyalty to the Liao family bolstered by a powerful secret police force, the Capellan Confederation is often dismissed as the Inner Sphere's most repressive nation. In fact, though the Capellan state exercises considerable power over its citizens, those same citizens frequently enjoy an unexpected degree of personal freedom. The balance between state power and individual liberty is particularly tricky for Capellans to navigate, but personal liberty does exist in this apparently totalitarian society. So long as they do not challenge the existing social order, most ordinary Capellans have considerable leeway within it. Few would dream of disrupting it, having absorbed their society's prevailing attitudes through years of indoctrination. For most inclined to break the Capellan mold, the fearsome mystique of the Maskirovka serves as sufficient deterrent.

Defining Philosophies

Three philosophies more than any others define what it means to be a Capellan: the Korvin Doctrine, the Sarna Mandate and the Lorix Creed. Capellan subjects learn these doctrines in some form from their first days in primary school, which begins at the age of five. Throughout each Capellan's eleven-year compulsory education, these defining philosophies are interpreted and reinforced in terms of loyalty to the Liao dynasty and to the Capellan nation. 

The Korvin Doctrine, originated by Alana Korvin DeVall in the early years of human space exploration, is the oldest and most central of the doctrines that serve as the foundation of Capellan society. Korvin wrote eloquently of the need for balance between humanity's outward expansion in the universe and maintaining meaningful connections with our racial and social origins. To keep from splintering into ever more isolated and weaker elements, Korvin proposed that all humans identify with a greater humanity in which each individual serves the needs of a greater civilization. She also argued that the immense distances of space demand a central authority, whose task is to define greater humanity and reconcile different human values. 

Though Korvin devised her doctrine long before the existence of any Capellan nation, later generations saw a unique Capellan link in her founding of two colonies-Sirius and Epsilon Eridani-in what would later become Capellan space. This "Capellan connection" made the Korvin Doctrine a perfect vehicle for Franco Liao to inspire personal and national loyalty to his infant Capellan Confederation. He and his successors equated the Capellan nation with Korvin's greater civilization, and the Capellan Chancellor with the central authority qualified to judge what was best for humanity. Under this interpretation, taught to generations of Capellan schoolchildren, the will of the Chancellor is equivalent to the good of humankind, and to challenge it is to threaten humanity's future. By extension, all Capellans partake of their Chancellor's prestigious position; if he or she is the ultimate arbiter of humanity's good, they are the embodiment of the greater civilization to which all human societies should rightly aspire. This mixture of pride and awe, all focused on the ruling Liao dynasty, powerfully reinforces the dominance of House Liao and the people's loyalty to it.

The Sarna Mandate, a founding precept of the militaristic Sarna Supremacy, became official Capellan doctrine during the reign of Jasmine Liao. The Sarna Mandate states that every society inevitably develops a military, scientific and political elite, and that this elite class is the only one truly capable of governing. This unique capacity justifies all actions the ruling elite may deem necessary for the survival of its people, culture or nation. In addition to providing a rationale for the continued authority of various political and military leaders-or their removal by the supreme authority, the Chancellor-the Sarna Mandate also supports the pervasive Capellan caste system. 

The Lorix Creed is the central philosophy of the short-lived Lorix Order, founded by Major Kalvar Lorix in 2672, and of the Warrior Houses that succeeded it. The Creed narrowly interprets the Sarna Mandate, emphasizing the role of the military elite above the rest of the ruling class. Kalvar Lorix's dictums enshrine the solider-particularly the MechWarrior, prince among fighters-as the almost sacred defender of his people and his nation. Because they risk their lives on others' behalf, warriors are entitled to the highest respect. In turn, the warrior owes unshakable loyalty to the civilians he protects, the state that employs him in his high calling, and the ruler of that state as his commander-in-chief. The original Lorix Order disbanded after twenty-five years, but its guiding philosophies remained. Colonel Hiritza Hikaru would use these same tenets in the late twenty-ninth century to create a blueprint for the famed Capellan Warrior Houses, elite military units akin to ancient orders of knighthood.

In addition to inculcating these defining ethics through public schooling, the Confederation ensures their presence in adult life through philosophical examinars and courts of philosophical inquiry. Both have links to the Maskirovka, the Capellan secret police.

The Maskirovka

Created in 2396 by Chancellor Kurnath Liao, the Maskirovka arose from the remains of the Deimosis, the intelligence-gathering arm of the Capellan Hegemony. Primarily concerned with military intelligence, the Maskirovka spied on foreign nations and spread misinformation about Capellan military capabilities. Chancellor Kurnath, however, also saw the Maskirovka as one of many tools for enhancing the power of the Chancellor's office. Though the organization's military duties initially outweighed its domestic ones, the Maskirovka always functioned as a means of tracking internal dissent. Several subsequent Chancellors expanded the agency's domestic scope until its two branches were virtually equal in power and importance.

Among Kurnath Liao's innovations were "philosophical examinars," government functionaries charged with fostering loyalty to the Chancellor through the Korvin Doctrine (and later the Sarna Mandate) taught in the public school system. Though nominally independent of the Maskirovka, the examinars received their funding through that agency and reported problems to Maskirovka superiors. Chancellor Kalvin Liao, known to history as "Kalvin the Devourer," vastly expanded the examinars' authority. He empowered them to launch investigations of politically suspect citizens in every social class. As a venue for these witch hunts, Kalvin established "courts of philosophical inquiry"-arenas for the public humiliation and destruction of anyone the Chancellor found inconvenient. Kalvin's saner successor, Mica Liao, scaled back the examinars' power and attempted to put some integrity into the courts, but apparently did not consider eliminating either of these useful tools of control. They remain active to this day, and the mere knowledge of them serves to keep most potential troublemakers in line. 

Militarily, the Maskirovka has proved its worth time and again, despite a few colossal blunders. The Confederation's acquisition of the BattleMech in 2456 was a Maskirovka coup, arguably the agency's proudest achievement. Its greatest failure came during the Fourth Succession War, when Maskirovka agents unknowingly vetted inaccurate information about triple-strength myomer presumably being developed at the New Avalon Institute of Science. Based on their recommendation, Chancellor Maximilian Liao ordered the BattleMechs of Warrior House Imarra equipped with the stolen technology. House Imarra's troops were on Sian then, charged with defending the capital against an expected Davion assault. When it came, the Davions sprung their trap. The myomer was bait, infected with a fatal flaw. The crippled Imarra 'Mechs and their pilots could only watch while the AFFS assault team rescued its master spy from the heart of the Chancellor's palace and then departed, leaving destruction in its wake. House Imarra did not recover from the blow to its prestige until 3057, when it redeemed itself during the Liao-Marik Offensive.

Domestically, the Maskirovka has long been as ubiquitous a presence as the ISF of the Draconis Combine. Unlike the ISF, the Mask has never shown any tendencies toward kingmaking. Its members and leadership are solidly loyal to the ruling Chancellor, particularly to the current incumbent. Over the ten years of his reign, Sun-Tzu Liao has increased the Maskirovka's budget several times-first to finance deep-cover operations and terrorist activities in the Chaos March, most recently commensurate with the Mask's increased responsibilities in newly reclaimed territories. Awash in funding and enjoying its new prestige, the Maskirovka serves Sun-Tzu Liao to the best of its considerable ability. From the examinars to CCAF political officers to the green-coated agents of military intelligence and the thousands of faceless informers among the general population, the Maskirovka has eyes and ears everywhere within and in most places beyond the Confederation's borders. The courts of philosophical inquiry continue to operate, though less frequently than in Kalvin Liao's day. They still find against the accused more often than not, on the theory that the innocent would do nothing to arouse suspicion in the first place. However, there is usually at least some merit to the allegations-rarely is the mere possession of coveted monies or property enough to see a citizen condemned. Citizens found to hold "incorrect views" face penalties ranging from loss of social position to heavy fines and property confiscation to prison time. 

Personal Freedom: A Delicate Balance

The all-pervading ethics of service to the Capellan state and submission to the ruling elite, along with the looming shadow cast by the Maskirovka, at first glance portray the Confederation as a rigidly repressive society gripped in the Chancellor's iron hand. In practice, however, many Capellan citizens enjoy remarkable personal freedom. The degree to which any given citizen controls his or her own life depends not on the whim of the Chancellor, but on the character of the noble who rules the planet or star system where that citizen resides. 

Though relatively small compared to its neighbors, the Capellan Confederation covers considerable interstellar distances over which no single ruler or central government can feasibly extend total control. As with other Inner Sphere states, the Chancellor and the government on Sian concern themselves primarily with statewide power and policy. Individual Capellan star systems are governed in the Chancellor's name by various ranks of lesser nobles, who generally run their fiefdoms as they see fit. The local ruler is expected to keep the peace; how he or she accomplishes this is the noble's own business. Regional, system-wide and planetary governments vary widely, from freewheeling bastions of enterprise to tightly controlled regimes reminiscent of ancient Asia's Bamboo Curtain. The worlds of Ares and Capella, respectively, represent these two extremes; most worlds fall somewhere between the two.

Ares, a commercial free port exempted from the tight trade restrictions of the early thirty-first century, has since developed into an entrepreneur's Mecca, with a degree of political freedom to match. Though no citizen dares openly challenge the wisdom of the Chancellor or the rulership of House Liao (assuming any were so inclined), debates in the Planetary Council are loud, often profane free-for-alls in which elected delegates from various cities and major companies speak their minds with unusual candor. Trade and labor regulations are similarly lax in order to promote a business-friendly climate. The planetary ruler, Lady Jasmine Dunbar, keeps a light hand on the reins of administration. So long as Ares continues to prosper, local political leaders may run things as they wish, obligated only to send Lady Jasmine regular political and economic reports. Maskirovka agents on Ares are familiar with local customs and demonstrate a fine understanding of the boundary between plain speaking and potential treason. 

The planet Capella, equally in thrall to economic interests, is as different from Ares as night from day. Two major industries hold sway here-the Capellan Commonality Bank and Ceres Metals. The former came under the control of a loyalist minor mandrinn after the defection of Candace Liao, its former CEO; it remains a source of revenue for Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao, though he does not manage its affairs personally. 

The head of Ceres Metals is the ruler of the Capella system, Duke Benito Rivoli. A latter-day corporate baron in the mold of his iron-willed father, Kingston, Duke Rivoli runs his company and his world as a virtual autocrat. Believing that freedom in one area makes for discontent in others, the duke discourages most manifestations of free thinking. Everything from small business ventures to local arts festivals must be vetted by the Committee for Public Order, consisting of five upper-echelon Ceres officers and two members of the duke's family. Though the laws of the Capellan Concordat clearly forbid "any representative of the chief executive" to deprive a Capellan citizen of life or liberty without due process of law, Duke Rivoli maintains that he is the law on Capella and so may act as he wishes to preserve order and stability.

Whispers of Democracy 

Even those Capellans governed by despots enjoy a little democracy, harking back to the Capellan Hegemony's earliest decades. A touch of that long-forgotten democratic tradition shows up in the office of planetary refrector and in the elected leadership of the Capellan caste system.

The office of refrector, created in response to the tyrannies of Chancellor Kalvin Liao, exists in part to check the power of nobles who abuse their position. Each Capellan world elects its own refrector, who serves the local lord as the common people's representative. Under the Capellan Concordat, the refrector may act on behalf of any citizen accused of wrongdoing, and may demand a personal audience with the Prefectorate on Sian to present the defendant's case. Many refrectors also serve as the commanders of planetary militias, and can therefore resist orders to act against "troublesome" civilians. Finally, a refrector may try to curb a despotic planetary noble by appealing to the Diem, administrator of several star systems in a given region. If the Diem finds merit in the appeal, he or she can take steps to ameliorate the lesser noble's excesses.

Each caste's adult members similarly elect caste leaders. Part and parcel of Capellan society, the Capellan caste system is far more fluid than its counterpart in the Draconis Combine. Individuals may marry freely into other castes or even change castes with the caste leaders' permission. The system encompasses all levels of society below the nobility, dividing the people into seven categories based on the type of work they perform. Administrators and bureaucrats make up one caste, scientists and technicians another, various professions a third, medical professionals a fourth, artists and entertainers a fifth, and common laborers a sixth. Indentured laborers, known as servitors, comprise the lowest caste. Natives of newly conquered worlds, prisoners captured in raids, or Capellans who lost or never earned citizenship, servitors can theoretically work their way out of bondage, though in practice this seldom happens. Prisoners of war are the exception to this dismal reality; their term of service lasts for five years, after which they may apply for citizenship below noble rank. Regardless of a servitor's origin, his or her children may join any caste for which their abilities qualify them, and may earn full citizenship like any other Capellan. 

Citizenship

Capellan citizenship is another avenue of personal liberty for those who earn it, though in an indirect way. Apart from the legal benefits enshrined in the Capellan Concordat, the process of earning the name of citizen reinforces a sense of individual worth along with the collective ideal. Making citizenship contingent on service to the state clearly emphasizes the state's paramount importance; citizenship is a privilege reserved for those who give something to the nation that nurtured them. At the same time, however, the newly minted citizen experiences a profound understanding of his or her personal value. His contribution alone won him the right to join the select company of the citizenry; he personally did something for his nation, which recognized and rewarded him by making him fully part of it. 

This dual effect accounts for much of the average Capellan's fierce pride in his realm. He earned the right to call himself Capellan, and the Confederation would be the poorer without his efforts. A sense of making a difference, however small, sustains most Capellan citizens through many a hardship inflicted by fate or imposed by harsh overlords. It also makes acceptance of their society's many restrictions seem like a reasonable price to pay. 

3067 UPDATE

3060, Rasalhague, Wolf Occupation Zone
Galaxy Commander Phoenix Wolf
COMMANDER OF THE WATCH