REFERENTES BIBLIOGRÁFICOS Y NORMATIVOS

The Taurian-Canopian War (also called the Magistracy- Concordat Conflict, or the Herotitus Crisis, depending on whose textbooks are consulted) was a brief dispute that erupted in mid-2813 between the Taurian Concordat and the Magistracy of Canopus. The war is remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which that it was the only full-scale conflict between Periphery states for the entirety of the Succession Wars era.

It was also the “cleanest-fought” of the border clashes in the entire First War period. Across the four worlds where it was fought, not a single weapon of mass destruction was deployed. At the start of the conflict, both realms possessed fewer than ten BattleMech regiments each; while the Taurian Concordat did have an operational WarShip at its disposal (the Concordat-class TCS

Parin), the vessel never left Flannagan’s Nebula. Furthermore, while

the starting and ending dates of the war span more than eight months, the vast interstellar distances between the four battle sites meant that most attack forces spent more time in transit than actually fighting. After all was said and done, in fact, the total amount of time spent in combat between both sides was just over eight standard Terran days, leading to one Canopian historian to refer to the conflict as the “200-Hour War.”

The war began when the Taurian Protector of the Realm, Semyon Calderon, convinced his Privy Council to authorize a plan to expand the realm’s resource base in anticipation of potential invasion from the Federated Suns. Contemporary critics of this decision openly wondered how the conquest of worlds situated between the Concordat and the Magistracy of Canopus could possibly have aided the Taurians in a war against House Davion, but their concerns failed to register in the upper chambers of the government, who ultimately backed the Protector. It is surmised that Calderon’s appeal to the Privy Council not only addressed his unsubstantiated war fears, but also added the promise of reclaiming worlds denied to the Concordat by borders drawn during the years of Star League oppression.

As it was, the Protector was interested in securing two worlds in particular: Herotitus and Detroit. Both worlds were self-sufficient and resource-rich, but only sparsely populated and developed. They were also located close to the rimward fringes of the Capellan Confederation, which was busy dealing with wars on both sides. Along with a third system, Spencer, these worlds had initially been settled by a mix of Canopian and Taurian colonists.

During the Star League era, competing claims on those three “free worlds” had been arbitrarily decided by a League chronically indifferent to Periphery affairs. The Magistracy of Canopus was awarded nominal control over Detroit and Herotitus, while the Taurian Concordat was awarded nominal control over Spencer. However, the imposed treaty defined “nominal control” as a kind of demilitarized protectorate status of the respective realms, which meant neither realm was allowed to post military forces more significant than paramilitary militia on these worlds, while Star League “observers” maintained watch posts in these systems— ostensibly in the name of peacekeeping, but largely to take note of stability under Clan occupation. Following the Clans’ abandonment

of the coreward Periphery in the late 3080s, Von Strang’s World has devolved into ruin and piracy.

Star’s End: The world of Star’s End and its asteroid fields

persisted after the Republic’s fall as a haven for pirates plaguing the Inner Sphere for centuries, including the notorious Belt Pirates. The hidden JumpShip yard based in the system helped keep the pirate bands viable for much of that time, but was dismantled by the Clans during their occupation. Since the Clan withdrawal of the late 3080s, Star’s End and its lone habitable planet, Novo Cressidas, is home to a smattering of diverse settlements united under a loose government for mutual protection.

Rim Collection: The Rim Collection of today consists of several

former Republic worlds that survived for centuries at a subsistence level after their realm’s demise. Uniting in the late 3040s for mutual defense against banditry, the Collection developed a loose democratic society that has struggled to hold the realm together to this day, and combined their resources to maintain a military based primarily on mercenary hiring.

Rim Territories: Another group of former Republic worlds that

reunited centuries after that nation’s collapse, the Rim Territories is a bandit kingdom in the classic sense of the world. Although banded together ostensibly in the name of mutual defense and resource- pooling, the leadership of this realm (which also includes a few Rim Worlds systems once occupied by the Lyran Commonwealth) is mainly an alliance of pirate groups who run their worlds like a collection of organized crime families, with each world serving as a different band’s “turf.” Surprisingly, the Rim Territories has survived for decades under this arrangement, and despite the criminal nature of their leadership, the Territories’ worlds are more stable than most independent Periphery worlds.

Secret Outposts of the Republic

Discovered only decades or centuries after the fact, a number of worlds (or world clusters) have turned up that evidence indicates were associated with Stefan Amaris’ secret build-up prior to the launch of his coup. Only a few of these Rim Worlds outposts have ever been confirmed, and all were found in an advance state of ruin, often due to harsh environmental conditions or an outbreak of fighting between either their own survivors or the survivors and local bandits.

Records found among these ruins, which appear not only along the coreward fringes of the fallen Republic, but also in the Deep Periphery beyond Taurian space, show that there may have been as many as thirty such “outposts” located beyond the fringes of the original Star League’s sphere of influence. Yet, to date, only four secret Rim Worlds outposts have been confirmed by deep-space explorer groups. With clear evidence that these systems served to train and equip the vast number of troops who would eventually launch the Vandenberg Uprising and overthrow the Terran Hegemony, many lostech prospectors have combed over large swaths of space in search of the others. The mystery of where these remaining outposts might be, and in what condition, persists today.

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On the ground, the Taurians and Canopians chased each other around the planet’s few significant military targets, most of which amounted to spaceports and mining complexes. After the MAF defenders failed to lure the invaders into a major ambush prepared near the port city of Dearborn, the campaign for Detroit (such as it was) devolved into a series of attempted traps and counter- traps that neither side proved foolish enough to blunder into. The fighting for Detroit thus ground down into quick defensive actions and probing raids until word of the truce arrived months later. Spencer

Upon receiving word of the assault on Herotitus, Magestrix Rwannah Centrella ordered the MAF to retaliate, choosing as their first targets the free system of Spencer, and the Concordat fringe system of Portland. By hitting an actual Taurian system, Centrella hoped to drive home a warning to the Concordat: the Magistracy would not be easy prey.

The first attack, on Spencer, proved nearly as disastrous for the Canopians as had the Taurian attack on Herotitus. MAF DropShips carrying the Kossandra’s Volunteers BattleMech regiment, backed by a mixed armor and infantry regiment and two squadrons of aerospace fighters, arrived via the system’s zenith jump point and burned straight for the planet. Their target was the capital city of Liberty Point, the largest urbanized area on Spencer—a fact picked up in their communications chatter by signal-eavesdropping satellites floating in-system.

On the ground was Comptroller Hendras Mohandun, commander of the local militia force, which included a mixed regiment of ’Mechs and armor. Upon learning of the Canopians’ objective, Mohandun directed the complete evacuation of the capital city and strategically parked the majority of his militia units among its larger buildings. Landing just outside the city, the inexperienced Volunteers stormed the capital and blundered straight into the trap. After nearly an hour of heavy fighting, the MAF invaders suffered nearly fifty percent casualties, while a mix of aerospace fighters and conventional bombers struck at their DropShips. Surrounded by Concordat forces, with the path back to their landing zone cut off, the remaining Magistracy units surrendered to avoid destruction.

Portland

On Portland, the Magistracy’s First Canopian Light Horse regiment proved much more effective, although that was almost certainly due to the fact that the Concordat had no significant aerospace forces to oppose their landing. After landing near the town of Carter’s Mill, the Light Horse secured the small settlement and proceeded to advance on the capital of Cooperton, which fell after a brief skirmish against local militia.

With no significant hard targets to capture on the sparsely- populated agrarian world, the Canopians were content with holding the capital area until they came under fire by guerilla insurgents. BattleMechs and armored vehicles assigned to the local militia, though far fewer in number than those of the Light Horse, managed to harass the invading MAF troops for weeks, using their superior knowledge of the terrain to spring traps and evade pursuit with ease. any valuable resources or industries the Territorial States might find

or found there. After Kerensky left the region and the Star League entered its death throes, both the Magistracy and the Concordat quietly “upgraded” the garrisons on each world.

In June 2813, the Taurian offensive began, with Marshal Gertrude Blake-Andrews assigned to the two-world invasion’s strategic command, seconded by Comptroller Augustin Shapiro. Herotitus

Arrogance, pure and simple, undermined the Taurian invasion of Herotitus before it even began. The Concordat battle group that materialized there did so at the planet’s zenith jump point, and proceeded to secure the local recharge station without even bothering to interdict its communications. Knowing through scout reports that the Canopian garrison on Herotitus lacked much in the way of BattleMechs, it is possible that Comptroller Shapiro, commander of the attack group, considered this a means of psychological warfare. By allowing the jump station to warn the planet below, the MAF troops on Herotitus would know they faced the superior might of his Second Pleiades Hussars ’Mech regiment and its supporting armor and infantry. By giving the defenders time to consider their imminent demise, Shapiro may have hoped to inspire a quick surrender rather than a protracted fight.

Instead, all he accomplished was giving the MAF defenders ample time to send word back to Canopus and prepare an effective defense. Employing aerospace assets that apparently missed the advanced scouts’ notice, the Canopians swarmed and shot down the incoming Taurian DropShips as they entered the planetary atmosphere. The fierce air battle took the invaders by surprise, and many ships crashed as concerted attacks by Magistracy fighters, small craft, and low-flying DropShips hammered them to pieces. In all, barely more than two companies of Concordat BattleMech forces made landfall intact, along with half a mixed regiment of infantry and armor.

Among the casualties was Comptroller Shapiro, whose command ship was the first to penetrate the atmosphere—and thus, the first to die in the crossfire. Command of the invasion once it landed fell to its ranking officer, Subaltern Josiah Brandamas of the Nineteenth New Vandenberg BattleMech Company. With most of the Second Pleiades Hussars decorating swaths of the local landscape, Brandamas acknowledged the hopelessness of his situation and surrendered to the defenders without even deploying his remaining troops.

Detroit

The invasion of Detroit, which took place under Marshal Blake-Andrews’ direct command, turned out much better for the Concordat than Herotitus—although it would have been hard to do worse. Unlike Herotitus, Detroit had no recharge station in the immediate vicinity of the arriving Taurians, and Blake-Andrews had no intention of announcing her presence to the Canopians, nor did she skimp on her aerospace escort. As a result, most of the TDF invaders—the Red Chasseurs ’Mech regiment, plus two regiments each of armor and infantry—managed to reach the planetary surface alive.

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Although specific causes varied, the more general reason the Alliance lost close to a third of its worlds was, quite simply, apathy.

Since its inception, the Outworlds government lacked the centralization and authority of even the semi-dysfunctional Free Worlds League. Its many worlds were largely administered on the local level, under a loose confederacy that barely acknowledged its own representative leaders on Alpheratz. More than any other Periphery state, the people of the Alliance saw themselves as independent, disinterested in the follies of the Inner Sphere. In the age of the BattleMech, its primary mode of defense was the aerospace fighter, used to intercept bandit groups long before they made landfall. To many, these traits combined to create the impression of a backwards realm, a nation of interstellar “hillbillies,” as it were.

Thus, the majority of the Inner Sphere barely took notice of affairs within the Alliance, if they thought of the realm at all. When the Succession War erupted, the Outworlds Alliance was roundly ignored by its neighbors, save for the expeditions sent through the region in a vain effort to trace Kerensky’s Exodus route. Houses Kurita and Davion were simply too focused on trying to destroy one another to pay much heed to a Periphery state that never posed a credible threat to them.

Even Jerome Blake, biased as he allegedly was against the Periphery realms, saw little reason to pay attention to the Outworlds one way or the other. When his ComStar Order got around to establishing HPG compounds in the region, its efforts scarcely ventured beyond the Alliance’s capital; the majority of the realm had to make do with courier ships for their interstellar communications. After weeks of failing to decisively beat the Taurian insurgents,

the Light Horse finally decided to simply plunder the capital’s stores of food and basic supplies before pulling back to their DropShips. When word came down that a ceasefire was in the works, the Light Horse was only too happy to put Portland behind them and return home. Aftermath

Though the Canopian response to the Concordat invasions of Herotitus and Detroit was far from devastating, it was fast and decisive enough to give the Taurians pause. The fact that the Magestrix was ready to retaliate within months of the first strikes, combined with news of the spectacular failure on Herotitus, quickly convinced the Taurian government to rethink its support for what became known as Semyon Calderon’s war. Furthermore, the casualties and costs of prosecuting a conflict where the front lines were several jumps away from the nearest friendly border underscored the utter pointlessness of the entire affair in a way that words alone apparently could not.

In a subdued signing ceremony on Detroit in February 2814, emissaries from both realms agreed to uphold the borders established during the Star League era, while reaffirming the free worlds of Herotitus, Detroit, and Spencer as demilitarized systems. Prisoners of war taken from both sides were returned to their homelands over the following month, during which time the media outlets in both realms heaped scorn on the Protector Semyon Calderon for “playing House Lord.”

The Taurian-Canopian War would be the only major war involving a Periphery state until the Canopian-Andurien War in the 3030s. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, Protector Semyon Calderon dismissed Marshal Blake-Andrews, hoping to deflect blame for the failed campaign on her. Blake-Andrews’ replacement as head of the TDF was Natal Choudhoury of the Taurian Guard, who would later sum up the war with a dry quip: “[The war] was not a total loss; it can always be used as a bad example.”

As for Semyon Calderon himself, the embarrassment of the disastrous conflict would haunt him for years as the Privy Council hardened against him and his people lost confidence in his leadership. The animosity would eventually lead to his resignation in 2816. In his place, the Privy Council chose Rayna Arantino, the Minister of Education at the time, to serve as Protector of the Realm—one of the very few times a non-Calderon ever held the title.