Volume XLVI: Periphery Nations, Pt. II—Taurian Concordat

Fact Sheet: Taurian Concordat and Calderon Protectorate
Founding Year: 2335 (2253 as Taurian Homeworlds, Concordat); 3066 (Protectorate)
Capital (City, World): New Samantha, Taurus (Concordat); New Taurus, Erod’s Escape (Protectorate)
National Symbol (Both): A bull’s head with exaggerated horns that curl downward and encompass three gold five-pointed stars (Calderon Protectorate uses black stars.)
Location (Terra relative): Rimward, beyond Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns
Total (Inhabited) Systems: 22 (Concordat); 13 (Protectorate)
Estimated Population (3130): 33,031,000,000 (Concordat);15,310,000,000 (Protectorate)
Government: Democracy (currently under military rule, Concordat); Democracy (Protectorate)
Ruler: Protector Kaff Doru (Concordat); Protector Sam Calderon (Protectorate)
Dominant Language(s): English, Spanish, French
Dominant Religion(s): Deism (official), Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism
Unit of Currency: Bull (1 bull = 0.12 C-Bills)

New Samantha is a city that serves as both a grim reminder of the horrors of war, and as a symbol of the Taurian will to overcome any adversity. Once an extensive metropolis that dominated a vast flatland, at the juncture of two major rivers and a glacial lake, the original city of Samantha became so expansive that it overtook the once-separate spaceport, establishing a central point between the Old City and its South Quarter. Today, however, few who had looked upon such vistas would recognize the city of New Samantha, or its surrounding countryside. The Word of Blake’s strategy for the Taurian Concordat centered on the virtual annihilation of the Taurian capital, in a strike more treacherous than ever conceived before. Covert agents and engineering teams slipped past the defense networks and worked for months on their complex plot, finally sending several of the planet’s smaller local asteroids—a natural feature of the system that has long served as the basis of the homeworld defense—hurtling into the surface, many aimed right at New Samantha. The unconventional bombardment smashed the heart of the Concordat in a short, merciless rain of DropShip-sized boulders, which flattened huge swaths of the surface and wiped Samatha almost completely off the map. The Taurians, a proud and determined people, eventually rebuilt their city over the now-rugged landscape, around the triple-crater lake that filled up from the inadvertently diverted flow of the local rivers. Structures built to withstand heavy weapons’ fire now dominate the low-slung skyline of this new metropolis, seeded with all manner of antiaircraft batteries and missile defense systems. Scattered among the streets of this rebuilt city are monuments to fallen heroes of the Concordat, as if the stern-faced people needed more reminder than the cratered vista all around them.

In this, the oldest Periphery realm still standing, the people of the Taurian Concordat loved their independence so much that the struggle to integrate them into the Star League was among the worst fighting of the Reunification Wars. As the first realm to openly rebel against the tax edicts levied by the League’s last First Lord, more fighting ravaged the industries and defense forces that a century of Star League rule had nearly restored.

When the Star League fell, the Concordat, like the Magistracy of Canopus, opted for a position of armed neutrality, save for a brief but inconclusive conflict against the Canopians during the early twenty-ninth century. With a longstanding grudge against the Capellans and the Federated Suns, thanks to several incidents during and prior to the Star League era, the Concordat turned most of its energies toward beefing up its military industries, eventually producing the strongest armed forces in the Periphery. Each generation of Calderons, the monarchs whose dynasty ruled the Concordat throughout most of its existence, carried on this paranoia, focusing especially on the so-called “Davion bogeyman,” many times to the nation’s detriment. And it was after decades of high alert along the Concordat border, in anticipation of an attack that never came, that the power structure of the Concordat first began to unravel.

Marshall Hadji Doru was the first one to really step up and denounce Protector [Thomas] Calderon’s paranoia for what it truly was—utter madness. Many in the Concordat, perhaps, hoped he would then either usurp power for himself, or place Thomas’ son, Jeffrey, on the throne. Jeffrey, by all accounts a bright and insightful young man, was at almost the same time working to curry favor with the Canopian Magestrix, having secretly accepted her olive branch toward the formation of a pan-Periphery alliance. Knowing that the crippling effects of the heightened military alert were killing his realm’s economy, Jeffrey laid the groundwork for a formal alliance in anticipation of the showdown with his father he knew was coming. As it happened, the Concordat’s Ministry of Trade and Colonization acted first. In 3055, they stormed in on a Privy Council meeting with the Protector and demanded an end to the alert status and civilian conscriptions, as well as a loosening to trade and travel restrictions, threatening to take the matter to the Court of Judicial Review when Calderon refused. When the Protector then demanded of Marshall Doru that he arrest the ministers, he set off the coup that toppled him from power. Instead of arresting the ministers, Doru arrested the Protector, and convinced Jeffrey Calderon to ascend to the throne. Unfortunately, the people of the Concordat would know a Golden Age under Jeffrey Calderon for all too short a season. . . . —Valerie DuBois, The Trinity Alliance: What Went Right?, Hardcore Press, 3120

Jeffrey Calderon did indeed bring sweeping changes and a new Golden Age to the Taurian Concordat in his brief rule, repealing many of the state-of-emergency edicts passed down by his father and those before him. He also brought the Concordat into an alliance with the Magistracy of Canopus, and worked together with the Canopians in colonizing the open space between their realms. Calderon was prepared to discuss entering into the Trinity Alliance with the Capellans when renegade Colonial Marshals from this New Colony Region took him and the Canopian leader hostage in an effort to forge an independent state. Jeffrey Calderon would die before the crisis ended early in 3061, leaving no heirs, and a reactionary, Lord Grover Shraplen, would ascend to the Protectorship.

Shraplen’s ascent rocked the realm to its core. Though technically a democracy, with many layers of councils and ministries to serve as advisors and checks against the absolute power of the Protector—all intended to ensure the sanctity of civil liberties—the traditional ruler of the realm had always been a member of House Calderon. More than merely a change in tradition, however, was the fact that Shraplen was a known opponent to many of Jeffrey Calderon’s reforms, a man who held to the same anti-Davion paranoia as the previous administration. His rise would prove a throwback to the days of Thomas Calderon, but ironically enough, it would be the Concordat’s entry into the Trinity Alliance that would accelerate the collapse.

After throwing its weight behind Sun-Tzu and his campaign against St. Ives and the Chaos March, where the Taurian Defense Forces were savaged, the TDF began to rally for a breakaway. The New Colony Region seceded from the alliance, forming the Fronc Reaches, even as the Concordat military fought in foreign lands. Taking up the banner of change was Marshal (Baron) Cham Kithrong, an outspoken opponent of the Protector, who championed Jeffrey Calderon’s illegitimate son, Erik Martens (Calderon), as a replacement for the Protector.

Rather than debate the issue, Shraplen attempted to bring Kithrong to heel by force, resulting in a brief civil war that tore the Concordat in two. Kithrong and his followers retreated to form the Calderon Protectorate, leaving Shraplen with only half a realm and an economy on the brink of collapse. In the midst of this crisis, a task force from Davion space entered the Concordat, sparking a conflict with the Federated Suns. Concordat troops, under Shraplen’s orders, lashed out at the Davion realm, seizing several worlds before their offensive stalled in the Pleiades Cluster. Battered, divided, and on the brink of collapse, the Concordat forces held their positions, switching to a defensive posture and focusing only on surviving long enough to solidify their gains while the government rallied.

Then came the Jihad.

During that terrible war, the Word of Blake, taking advantage of Shraplen’s paranoia of House Davion and his misplaced trust in their “advisors,” enacted a terrible plan. Using their Erinyes system, the Blakist assault consisted solely of dropping several of the smaller asteroids near Taurus upon the planet itself, leaving just enough evidence behind to incriminate the Federated Suns. The horrendous attack, though seen a few more times during the Jihad, all but decapitated the Taurian leadership, leaving the rest of the Concordat convinced that the Davions had launched the strike. The Blakists’ classic example of divide-and-conquer strategy succeeded brilliantly in setting the Taurians on the Federated Suns like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds, and in the fierce fighting that resulted, Taurian and Davion forces were horribly savaged, while several FedSuns worlds bore the scars of Taurian nuclear warheads.

The decimation of the Taurian Defense Force all but laid the realm bare for attack by pirates and Calderon revolutionaries, disrupting the government hold over several Taurian worlds, which remain independent to this day. Tenaciously clinging to the worlds seized from the Suns, the new Taurian leadership found itself in charge of an ever-shrinking nation, but even to this day, their troops remain on alert, holding onto these few gains made decades ago.

Today, the Concordat and the Protectorate are struggling shadows of what they once were, still fighting a low-intensity civil war despite generations of separation. Both nations maintain the trappings of the democratic system of the original Taurian Concordat, intended to ensure the civil liberties of all citizens. Both of these governments are also supported by massive bureaucracies, which include ministries of defense, trade, education, and the interior, as well as an extensive court system to resolve legal disputes on all levels of government and review legislation. But where the Calderon Protectorate is ruled once more by a hereditary member of House Calderon, the Concordat itself is operating under military rule, its Protector, Kaff Doru, raised from the ranks of the Taurian Defense Force, and operating under emergency powers.

Though they remain divided today, both of these realms maintain not only a shared history and government, but both also maintain the same famous Taurian stubbornness and love for freedom. In this ideal, they remain, as always, united.

In our fifth segment on the Periphery, we’ll examine the Marian Hegemony, the fourth most powerful Periphery state to survive the Succession Wars and the Jihad that followed! Won’t you join us? I’m Bertram Habeas.