Volume XLVIII: Denizens of the Periphery

Tourist guides today don’t bother with the Periphery world of Antallos, except to caution folks to stay away. But back in the time of the Star League, this planet was a hub of trade between the League and the nearby Federated Suns, Draconis Combine, and Outworlds Alliance. With the fall of the League, this world and its stores of lostech became a prime target for savage raids by neighboring realms, until all semblance of government finally collapsed in the late 2800s. The entire social structure here eroded into a fragmentation of city-states, many of them ruled by nomadic tribes and descendants of refugees from House Kurita and the old Outworlds Alliance, all patterned on unique sets of governments that often come into conflict. But it wasn’t until 200 years later that Port Krin would arise as the dominant force in planetary politics, united by force and thriving on piracy and slave trading. Outside the city of Port Krin, located on the southern shores of Talisea, is a world made up mostly of blasted desert wastes and badlands, with a smattering of city-states, only a few of which possess BattleMechs. Prospectors, scavengers, pirates, and nomads wander these wastes, their means of survival a potential hazard for any unwary traveler who crosses their paths. Out there, there is no law but survival of the fittest, and with pirates and lost mercenaries running the cities, treachery lurks around every street corner.

Antallos is the kind of world we tend to think of, if and when we do think about the Periphery. We imagine blasted wastelands, perhaps seeded with the decayed remains of a glorious past. We envision brigands and scavengers, scratching out a living in these wastes through murder and plunder. Our minds focus on these negative images, believing them to be all there is on the fringes of human expansion.

Yet, as we have seen, there are realms in these regions as rich and complex as any nation of the Inner Sphere. The Magistracy of Canopus, with its strong economy, rich cultural history, and economy of luxury, provides a striking contrast to the militant police state of the Capellan Confederation nearby, as does the fiercely independent Taurian Concordat to its monolithic neighbor, the Federated Suns. Even the Marian Hegemony, pirates made good by generations of ambition and struggle, stands as a curious counterpoint to the nearest former Free Worlds provinces of the Rim Commonality and the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey.

Beyond these realms lie even more unique nations and minor powers. Beyond Lyran space, for instance, lies the Rim Collection, a seven-world democratic state founded in 3048 by a Free Worlds League expatriate and a local town councilman with dreams of greatness. Struggling for many years against pirate raids and the natural strife that comes with the birth of any nation, the Collection has remained a democratic realm, a confederation of worlds united for trade and self-defense, but free to elect their own leaders and create their own laws. The people here are as hard-working and independent as their nearest Lyran neighbors, and generally as benign.

Not so far from this realm lies the Rim Territories, an eleven-world bandit kingdom, forged from worlds that broke away from Lyran rule in the chaos of the Jihad, plus colonies settled by refugees of that same horrible conflict. Desperate for order and for protection, these people came easily under the sway of powerful bandit leaders based in the area, and continue to scratch out a living while their “protectors” prey on neighboring realms.

Further rimward, past the shattered remains of the Circinus Federation (a pirate state cut almost from the same cloth as the Marian Hegemony, but annihilated in the final years of the Jihad along with its capital world), is the Lothian League, a confederation of six icy worlds, founded by Taurian refugees from the Reunification War, and briefly conquered during the Hegemony’s rise in the mid-thirtieth century. Though regaining their freedom in the chaos of the Jihad, the League and the Hegemony maintain strong ties, and there is still a distinctly Roman flavor to the governments that now maintain the Lothian worlds.

Wedged between the Hegemony and the Rim Commonality of the former Free Worlds League another tiny realm, a three-planet alliance known as the Niops Association, is located. Founded as a Star League–era astronomical research base, these worlds grew into a microstate after an influx of refugees from the Succession Wars arrived, and have lived in relative peace and isolation under the rule of noble intellectuals, descended from the original researchers.

Following along the rimward regions of the Inner Sphere, we find the Fronc Reaches, an eleven-world alliance once known as the New Colony Region between the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat. Since winning their independence in the mid 3060s, these worlds have remained loosely affiliated with the Magistracy of Canopus and—by extension—the Capellan Confederation, with a weak central government and a standing army that is composed of mercenaries and “rehabilitated” pirates. Much like the Taurians and Canopians who originally founded these worlds, the inhabitants here are hearty folk, determined to survive by their own blood, sweat, and tears, and equally determined to fight and die for what they have earned.

Beyond the boundaries of the Federated Suns lie two more Periphery realms as different from each other as night and day, with the Filtvelt Coalition, a seven-star breakaway state of the Federated Suns, definitely belonging to the “day.” Culturally linked to the Davion realm, the Coalition is civilized, but no less determined to remain free of its motherland, its rulers sworn to hold onto the power they claimed when the Jihad cut them off from New Avalon. The Tortuga Dominions, of course, are the “night,” by comparison, consisting of six planets ruled by pirates; a true bandit kingdom, where justice belongs to the strong, and rulers are determined by their prowess with a BattleMech.

Farther coreward of these realms is another three-world league, like a twin to the Niops Association, but separated at stellar birth. The Mica Majority, a trio of mining worlds long run dry, was founded originally as a penal colony for criminals of the Draconis Combine. The men and women who live in the domes of these frigid worlds manage a modest existence through mining and trade with nearby systems, secure that the fruits of their labors are insufficient to draw the attentions of even the most desperate pirates.

As if to prove that Periphery realms can come in an even smaller size, however, we come upon Randis IV, a world dominated by an ancient brotherhood of MechWarriors, each of whom undergoes trials so grueling they could even test the mettle of an elite Clan warrior. The Brotherhood of Randis, like a band of Knights Templar, has protected this peaceful agrarian world for many generations, forming the pinnacle of a one-world feudal hierarchy known as the Fiefdom of Randis.

In the coreward regions, beyond the occupation zones of the Clans and the boundaries of the Rasalhague Dominion, lie the Barrens, an expanse of worlds where no laws hold sway, but where pirates and renegade Clansmen are a constant hazard. The true frontier, these worlds lost all semblance of the order brought to them under Clan domination; when, shortly after the terrible fighting of the Jihad, there were twin invasions by the Hell’s Horses and Ice Hellion Clans (not to mention the catastrophic fighting among the Clan homeworlds, fighting the Clans refuse to discuss, which cut them off from Clan space). Once known as the region where three minor powers held sway—the Oberon Confederation, the Greater Valkyrate, and the Elysian Fields—these worlds are now united only in their people’s fierce determination to remain free of Clan and Inner Sphere rulers. In this region it is not uncommon to find pirates at work, not looting or raiding these planets, but acting as mercenaries and protecting them in a series of informal alliances. Descendants of refugees from the Jihad may also be found here, working hard to develop respectable colonies far from an Inner Sphere they now see as corrupted beyond measure, a strange mix of the barbaric and the noble, in a region that has, for centuries, seen nothing but the former.

Scattered about these realms and regions are, of course, the independent worlds. Often preyed upon or preying upon their neighbors, or secure in their isolation and lack of valuable resources, these worlds are as homesteads in a vast frontier of space. Many are the homes of refugees from mankind’s millennia-long folly of war, while others are treasure-seekers, after that odd, rumored Star League cache leftover from the Golden Age.

They are as different from one another as any two people can be, yet united in that they live on the fringes of known space. They are the people of the Periphery, the hearty and independent souls who dared to look beyond the bounds of the Successor States and find a future of their own.

The next leg in our tour of the stars will bring us to an unusual power, both immense and ineffable. They serve all, yet claim few territories of their own, surviving in perfect symbiosis with all of the Inner Sphere, though once they may have sought to dominate it. We review the history of ComStar next time on our Tour of the Stars. I’m Bertram Habeas.