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Touring the Stars with Bertram Habeas

We began on Terra, millions of years ago. Today, mankind stretches throughout the Milky Way, touching worlds as far from our home as Clan space, more than two thousand light-years distant. Yet who are we, really? What have we become in our relentless push outward and onward? I’m Bertram Habeas, and tonight, we’ll find the answers to these and many other fascinating questions together, as we tour the stars!

Volume III: The Dragon’s Crucible
As any historian in the galaxy will tell you, the 31st century was a time of tremendous change and growth across the Inner Sphere. Besides watershed events such as the Clan Invasion, the rise and fall of the Federated Commonwealth, and the Word of Blake Jihad, this era was important to the Draconis Combine for other reasons. Among them, the formation of the Free Rasalhague Republic, the War of 3039, the integration of the abjured Nova Cat Clan, and even the rise and fiery fall of the infamous Black Dragon Society. In its centuries-old, rigidly stratified state, few would have expected the Draconis Combine to survive these tremendous and rapid upheavals. Indeed, but for one man, it very likely might have shattered.

Even before he became the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, Theodore Kurita was perhaps the most visionary leader of his time. Even the ambitious, forward-thinking Katrina Steiner, Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth, with her monumental Peace Proposal of 3020, could not compete with the man who challenged the core of his nation’s culture and beliefs for the better.

But for all his vision, one must wonder how much of his success had to do with the basic, and personal, differences between father and son. Theodore’s father, Takashi Kurita, was a brutally rigid traditionalist, much like Shiro Kurita or Urizen II, with unbending rules about honor and a penchant for swearing blood oaths against enemies both real and imagined. Theodore strove to be everything but another Takashi. His more progressive views and actions included elevating the yakuza and other so-called undesirables to fight for the Dragon, supporting the release of Rasalhaguians from centuries of oppression, and generally lifting a lot of the harsher standards that held down the Combine people for so long. These steps flew in the face of everything his father held dear.

Of course, it was a miracle that, given the deadly methods of past Kuritan rulers, Theodore wasn’t put to the sword by his own father. In that, one may suggest that the equally strong, and completely basic, feelings a father has for his son – even one so rebellious – spared the young Kurita’s life.
--Armando Sanchez, PhD., History and Psychology Professor at Greiger Institute of Modern History, Terra

Whether Theodore Kurita’s penchant for reform was the result of childhood rebellion against his father, or the implementation of strategic necessity, the changes he wrought in the Combine were profound. Yet in enacting his bold new plans, Theodore walked a treacherous tightrope, balancing the survival of his realm against the passions of its peoples. Success often vindicated him during this time under his father’s reign, even when he personally orchestrated the creation of the Free Rasalhague Republic. This action formed an instant buffer zone between the Combine and the Lyran half of the now-united Federated Commonwealth, while a side deal negotiated with ComStar gave the Combine access to Star League technology, including new BattleMechs for its war-ravaged army. Together with his new Ghost Regiments – staffed by yakuza and other “undesirables” formally recognized to serve the Combine’s interests – Theodore saw to it that his realm survived the Steiner-Davion’s efforts to destroy it in the War of 3039. No one, not even Takashi Kurita himself, could deny Theodore’s success, and very few in the Combine did more than verbally criticize his departure from tradition.

The Clan Invasion spurred another wave of reform, especially after Theodore claimed the throne. Many Combine citizens relaxed cultural restrictions within the Combine, while others helped open the realm to its neighbors. Historical enemies became valued allies – and, in some personal cases, even friends of a sort. Though the Japanese cultural identity and national pride remained strong – as it does today – it became possible once more for long-suppressed cultures, such as the Muslim Azami, to celebrate their own strength of character. Unfortunately, in the years that followed the Battle of Tukayyid, in which ComStar won a 15-year respite from the invaders on behalf of all Inner Sphere powers, the reforms that allowed the Dragon to survive its most devastating wars in recent memory nearly tore the realm apart from within.

The Black Dragons, the Kokuryu-kai, were a curious mix, to say the least. Allegedly an ancient group that always acted in the Dragon’s best interests, they made their presence felt only from the mid-3050s through the 3070s. Ironically, what made it possible for them to exist and function as well as they did were the very liberal reforms they wanted to stop. In that respect, they were a group dedicated to cutting off their own nose to spite their face.

In practice, the Black Dragons were an Asian version of the fabled Illuminati Society, a loose alliance of like-minded criminal, business, military, and political leaders who met in dark rooms and plotted the downfall of their government with the pretense of saving it. The question, however, was who were they saving it for? Was it for them? Doubtful, as the reforms they acted against actually helped most of them accumulate wealth and power. Was it for the people, then? Absolutely not! Indeed, historians of the last century have argued that the Society actually worked – perhaps unwittingly – for only one man or a handful of men, who merely wanted their own shot at the throne.

Alas, who the Dragons actually worked for, and what their ultimate goals really were, may never be known, as the Society was all but annihilated during the Jihad. Their activities and goals, however, fit in nicely with those of the Word of Blake fanatics, so perhaps there is some credence to theories that the Dragons were never interested in the Combine’s well being at all. Rather than a misguided group of traditionalists, what if the Black Dragons were actually a carefully grown dissident group that actually – and unknowingly – served the Word of Blake itself?
--John Kerrigan, author of Who’s Really in Charge? Avalon Press, 3129

For the Draconis Combine, the triple threat of the Federated Commonwealth, the Clans, and the Black Dragons reached its apex in the mid-3060s, when all three groups dragged the nation into a war on every front. Coordinator Theodore, hoping to isolate his realm from the fighting, was thwarted when the Black Dragons successfully instigated a war with the neighboring Ghost Bear Clan. Renegade troops on the borders of the FedCom realms then attacked. Forced to assume a posture of aggressive defense, Theodore launched heavy counterassaults on every front, eventually securing each one, though at a severe cost to the Combine military. When the Dragon emerged whole from these crucibles, it became clear that House Kurita would persevere no matter the odds.

So it was believed, until the Word of Blake Jihad.

Their military already broken from the fighting on both former FedCom fronts, and by the slugfest on the Ghost Bear border, the Combine was only beginning to recover from the ravages of war in the months leading up to the Blakist holy war. Predations by the newly arrived Snow Raven Clan in the nearby periphery forced the Coordinator to deploy troops all around his nation, thinning them out to cover every possible avenue of invasion. In that weakened state, the realm was almost overwhelmed in the first days of the fighting that erupted almost everywhere at once.

Compared to the recent conflicts, the Jihad presented the most hellish years of warfare known since the Second Succession War. Nuclear weapons were thrown about faster than a ’Mech army could be assembled, and the Combine command structure was all but smashed when Luthien and other key worlds were bombarded by a blitzkrieg of WarShips and ’Mech regiments. At the height of all this, the tragic loss of Theodore Kurita, perhaps the best Coordinator since Shiro himself, left a demoralized realm to battle an enemy that would stop at nothing to bring ruin to all those it touched.

It is a testament, once more, to the iron will of the Kurita clan, that the Combine managed to survive at all, but it is a monument to Theodore and his progeny that the realm actually managed to turn the tide alongside Devlin Stone and his liberating armies.

In our final installment on the Draconis Combine, we’ll take a look at how it exists today. Please join us as we continue our tour of the stars! I’m Bertram Habeas.

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