Volume XX: From the Ashes – The Capellan Confederation Today

Fact Sheet: Capellan Confederation
Founding Year: 2366
Capital (City, World): Zi-jin Cheng (Forbidden City), Sian
National Symbol: A green arm raising a green dao sword, against a green triangle, edged in gold.
Location (Terra relative): Rimward
Total (Inhabited) Systems: 166
Estimated Population (3130): 228,280,000,000
Government: Dictatorship (Chinese feudal stylings)
Ruler: Chancellor Daoshen (Centrella-) Liao
Dominant Language(s): Chinese (Mandarin, official), Chinese (Cantonese), Russian, English, Hindi
Dominant Religion(s): Buddhism, Taoism, Hindu
Unit of Currency: Yuan (1 yuan = 0.56 C-Bills)

A tropical wind blows through the city streets of Tian-tin, warmed by a yellow sun that appears almost ghostly in the overcast sky. The capital of St. Ives is a busy metropolis, a sea of traffic that never stops, even well into the night. Rising proudly over the city, a magnificent palace dome, surrounded by lush gardens of native flora, and flanked by elegant spires, stands the ancestral home of the Allard-Liaos, heirs to the St. Ives Commonality. If one looks closer, at the magnificent stone walls that separate the palace from the rest of the city, the telltale signs of carbon scorching on some of the rock become noticeable. Rusty grooves on the odd stone here and there hint at a previous life in some other structure, every one a memorial. It is said that Duke Kai Allard-Liao himself approved the use of the rubble as a major part of the rebuilding of the palace wall, and even the palace itself. Each stone used in this construction project, it is said, represents a building or life lost in the destruction of the city at the peak of the Word of Blake Jihad. Over two million Confederation citizens and soldiers died beating back the fanatics’ onslaught in Tian-tin, and a popular rumor says many of their ghosts now dwell on the palace grounds, where their memory is enshrined in the very structures.

The death of the original Tian-tin may echo the similar fate meted out to so many major Inner Sphere cities during the Jihad, but unlike the other Great Houses, House Liao stood alone when war came to it on the eve of recovery. From the ashes of this terrible crucible, the Capellan nation rose alone. To them, any aid rendered by the coalition under Devlin Stone was immaterial, for nearly every drop of blood spilled to win back the Capellan worlds was that of the Capellan people.

Sun-Tzu Liao led the Confederation on its own path through the Jihad, even though he was never trained as a warrior. His greatest tools, throughout the war and its aftermath, remained his gifts for motivating his people, and for misleading his enemies. These gifts would be put to their ultimate test even as the Blakists rained death upon the Confederation worlds. Nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, orbital bombardments—some with almost as much ferocity as was shown to the Free Worlds League later on—tore into the ravaged worlds of the realm, but Sun-Tzu survived to rally his people. Indeed, after the fall of Forbidden City on Sian in a massive bombardment, the thought that they had lost the first leader in centuries to make the Confederation believe in itself drove its warriors to incredible acts of bravery and fierceness. When Sun-Tzu returned just weeks later, and emerged again and again after Blakist terror agents sought his destruction, his aura of invincibility became a rallying point for the embattled nation. Sun-Tzu could not be killed, so neither could they.

Ironically, in the fires of the Jihad, Capellan nationalism became almost as fanatic as that of the Blakists themselves. Even those who once considered themselves enemies of the chancellor became grim-faced devotees as the darkness continued.

“I remember those days, as clear as though they happened yesterday,” says eighty-seven-year old Quinn, a citizen of St. Ives who claims the dubious distinction of being part of the forgotten Free Capella dissident movement. “We wept—we actually wept—when the Celestial Palace fell. We couldn’t believe it would have ever happened, no matter who sat on the Throne. My buddy, Pham, he said [Sun-Tzu] Liao was still inside. But even though we’d spent years hating him. . . Though we thought he’d put us through hell enough in the March, seeing those towers fall, and realizing the head of the Confederation was gone—just like that—we knew what we were seeing was bigger than any of us. We wept for all Capellans, even the Liao. “When he showed up on the holovid a few days later, smiling confidently and planning revenge, some of us thought it was some kind of trick, the kind you know all Liaos are capable of. ‘Maybe it’s a body double,’ I even said. But in the days that followed, the speeches, the plots and clever strategies . . . We knew then we had a leader—the leader—who could get our people through this. That’s when I decided I was done fighting for myself.”

To drive back the Blakists, the Capellans and the Canopians—their only “true” allies in that nightmarish war, according to Confederation history texts— unleashed the same firestorms as their enemies, demonstrating ruthlessness as never before, with every means at their disposal. As many as half of the nuclear and biological attacks that took place on Capellan soil are believed to have been launched by desperate Confederation forces. House Liao took few prisoners that weren’t shot soon after, no matter what their role in the Word of Blake’s Order was. It was at once the Confederation’s darkest and most valiant hour.

In the years that followed, a war-weary Confederation once more picked up the pieces under its Chancellor’s direction. Pride in the nation and its invincible ruler had become galvanized. In recognition for Devlin Stone’s “limited role” in saving his realm, Sun-Tzu ceded many burned-out worlds to The Republic, then focused his efforts on stabilizing the shattered remainder. But even this recognition could not dim the knowledge in the minds of the average Capellan that they owed their survival only to their own determination to survive, and to their Chancellor. Over the years, this nationalism continued to drive the Capellan people, as it does today, where only the Canopians are regarded as true friends of the realm—and then only because their ruler is the sister of the great Sun-Tzu’s heir, Chancellor Daoshen (Centrella-)Liao. It also explains in part why the CCAF was the last great BattleMech army to be decommissioned in the Inner Sphere in the years after the Jihad.

Sun-Tzu Liao’s spirit has not left the Confederation even today, over twenty years after his mysterious death on Liao. To many of his people, in fact, he did not die, but actually “ascended” to some higher state, and on some worlds there are those who still await his return, even while his son rules from a rebuilt throne, a son who emphasizes his father’s surname out of respect for the man regarded as the Capellan messiah.

The reverence for the Chancellor and the scars of the Jihad—still visible on many Confederation worlds—have created a curious mixture of pride and paranoia. Dedication to the state and to its rulers is expected to be absolute, and often is. The same level of devotion is also expected to the Chinese culture, which serves as a unifying standard throughout Capellan society and creates an atmosphere of quiet harmony, laced with underlying tension and almost xenophobic fear. Foreigners, even tourists and traders, are looked upon with scorn and suspicion. As the people remain determined to drive off or destroy any who would encroach upon their lands, all Capellans are taught that all their neighbors—save perhaps, those who dwell in the poor, misguided, but nevertheless well-meaning Magistracy of Canopus in the near Periphery—are potential enemies.

Despite the fires of cataclysmic war, House Liao’s Capellan Confederation remains a realm of great beauty and potential, albeit one where the natives have learned from the harsh lessons of history. Always on guard, even during peace, the Capellan spirit today resonates with that same defiant will that carried its people through four of mankind’s bloodiest centuries.

“Our unity is our strength. Our Chancellor is our will. These two things no army of men, or of BattleMechs, can ever deny. Though we may die this day, or the next, first, last, and always remember this: we are Capellan.” —Sang-jiang-jun Talon Zahn, CCAF Strategic Military Director, Capellan statewide address, 3072.

In our next four-part series, our tour through the history and cultures of the Inner Sphere will take us to the Rasalhague Dominion, the peculiar fusion of Clan strength with Inner Sphere diversity. I’m Bertram Habeas.