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master arminas
Clan Goliath Scorpion
Star Colonel
Joined: 07-Mar-2007 16:14
Posts: 718
Location: United States
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 Posted: 21-Oct-2008 14:55 Post subject: Taurian Concordat: A Eulogy |
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Good morning, everyone. Today we take a walk down a road that few interested in this universe we call Classic BattleTech ever start down; today, my friends, we walk out into the Periphery. The Taurian Concordat has always intrigued me—a community of worlds that enshrines civil rights, yet provides free education, health care, and pensions for its citizens. A nation-state that forgoes the continual back-and-forth warfare that so characterizes the Inner Sphere. A realm which has been trod upon time and again yet has always picked itself up and remains—to this day—what is was founded upon. A spirit of independence, a thirst for individual freedoms, rights, and responsibilities, a desire to be left alone in peace; all this alongside a genuine belief that it is the responsibility of the community to care for those in need.
Many say that this is a far-cry from what a ramshackle state out on the Periphery should be. Why? Just because the Inner Sphere has spent the better part of a quarter-millennium blowing itself to hell in a handbasket, why does that mean that the states of the Periphery must be worse off? When we avoid your wars and tend to our own needs, wants, and desires, when we don’t go haring off on offensive adventurism, when our factories and power plants and mines and farms aren’t being burnt down around our ears by your troops, WHY must we be worse off?
Back to the days before the dawn of the League, we have been pictured and caricatured as ignorant, self-absorbed, hill-billies from a back-water where we must eke out life in a primitive state of squalor. Yet the Star League itself knew better. The other three realms were no large matter for the Star League to go to war over, but the Concordat, ah, the Concordat. That was the enemy. For it was no primitive civilization. The Concordat had a multi-system government covering an area more than half the size of the Capellan Confederation, but with fewer worlds. It had a population numbering in the tens—if not hundreds—of billions, a thriving economy, factories and production lines, and while its technology was not quite as advanced as the Inner Sphere, it was oh-so-very close.
For, my friends, we could manufacture JumpShips and DropShips, compact core WarShips, Aerospace Fighters and BattleMechs. We made our own weapons and depended upon no one to secure the blessings of our liberty, save only ourselves. And because of that, we were a threat. And so did Ian Cameron seek to bring us low. And thus, the first act of the ‘community of human-kind’ was to declare war against its own. Not against just us, but against Canopus and the Outworlds and against the PEOPLE of the Rim who did not desire closer ties to ‘Mother Earth’.
For twenty long, harsh years we fought. Whole planetary populations were decimated by the ‘enlightened’ forces of civilization in their zeal to bring us under their banner. Industrial worlds in the Pleiades were laid to waste, so that even today—five centuries later—they are barely able to produce enough to keep them treading water. It took twenty years, and uncounted numbers of military and civilian deaths alike, but finally their endless streams of men and material brought us low. And in 2596, we surrendered to the Star League, ending the war.
And our suffering truly began. We were part of the League—an unwilling part, but a part nonetheless. Yet, we had no voice and no vote. No control over our economy and no right to bear arms in our own defense. Our children were taught what the League wanted them to learn; our songs were banned as ‘subversive’; our pockets picked clean by their bureaucrats and tax-men. We rebuilt our industries, and taught our children the true tales in our homes, and the dream did not die. Once again we grew proud and strong and, as all enslaved peoples do, we grew tired of the shackles upon us.
Our people went forth and built new factories, hidden factories, and produced new weapons of war. For throughout the Periphery a movement was building and in 2764 that movement sprang forward to reveal the 50 divisions of BattleMechs we had built. Oh, not all was built by the Concordat, not by far. For all of the peoples of the Periphery aided in the Cause and we were funded by none other than Stefan Amaris himself. Yet, of all the realms and all the peoples, we supplied over half of the troops and material for the great army that rose up against the Star League.
We fought for our freedom, but would have lost against incredible odds had not Amaris betrayed us all. For he desired not the freedom of his people, but the dominion over ALL people, and he slew the First Lord on Terra, taking the homeworld as his own. We made our peace then with Kerensky, and in 2767, for the first time in almost 200 years, our worlds were free of the League. Our casualties had been high, yet our people rejoiced. For once again we were free.
Nicoletta Calderon, that grand old dame of a Protector, took the safe course. We did not declare our independence. But she could see the writing upon the walls. Our factories came out from hiding, and we armed our people; we made plans to support those of us who lived on worlds where the machinery was failing—machinery made only on the Inner Worlds, worlds now wracked with war. We geared down to a level of technology that we could maintain, without relying upon others, abandoning those places were only technology allowed us to live.
And we set about to rebuild and recover.
It has been more than two centuries since that time, and during that entire time WE have not been fought over like the old bone two dogs crave. Our central worlds in the Hyades have never once been invaded, or even raided. Our factories are not cobbled together from salvaged wrecks as our engineers try to divine the secrets from long-faded texts. Our libraries and schools were never destroyed.
So why have we shrunk and lost more? There is no easy answer to that, my friends. We should not have. As a state that could once raise more than two dozen divisions of ‘Mechs—and retains the facilities to produce some excellent ‘Mech designs—why should we be limited to less than a dozen REGIMENTS to defend our worlds with? Why, with a history that says we built our first Cruiser less than 50 years after settling the Hyades have we not been able to even repair a Corvette in two centuries of freedom?
The answer is because we would be far too dominant if we did. If the people who wrote this universe allowed that to happen, it would diminish the Inner Sphere as the cradle of civilization and transform them into barbarians picking at the bones of their ancestors. So our people must suffer FOR NO GOOD REASON other than to allow THEM, in the their war-scarred homes, to point fingers at us and say, ‘see, we are better than those Periphery bandits’.
We see this with each new product, my friends. There is no room in this universe for people who only want to live their lives in peace, without interference from the outside. The moral of this story is not even to try—for if you do, then something, sometime will happen to ruin all you have ever accomplished, at least in this universe. It should not be so, my friends, but it is. And it saddens me that what could have become such a vibrant part of the universe must die an artificial death to fit the vision of the time.
Arminas tar Valantil
Grand Master of the Ebon Rose
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ralgith
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company
"Ralgith's Renegades"
Colonel
Joined: 18-Aug-2003 00:00
Posts: 2021
Location: United States
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| Posted: 21-Oct-2008 23:53 Post subject: Taurian Concordat: A Eulogy |
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A very interesting a true commentary.
_________________
Colonel Ralgith t'Mayasara
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company 'Ralgith's Renegades'
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Sleeping Dragon
Draconis Combine
Tai-i
Joined: 06-Apr-2005 00:00
Posts: 4820
Location: Czech Republic
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| Posted: 22-Oct-2008 03:33 Post subject: Taurian Concordat: A Eulogy |
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A place for love freedom and human rights? In Battletech? BWAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWAH! 
_________________
The dragon NEVER sleeps!
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CO_17thRecon
Kell Hounds
Major
Joined: 10-Sep-2002 00:00
Posts: 1297
Location: United States
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| Posted: 22-Oct-2008 12:55 Post subject: Taurian Concordat: A Eulogy |
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There are some factors you are failing to consider, as to the Taurian Concordant's lack of power in the Inner Sphere.
1) The lack of trade after the League collapse.
Almost all economies in the Inner Sphere lept to a savage war of near destruction. Even those that didn't could no longer ply goods with those that did. Yes, this would hurt the Taurians less than, say, the Canopians, but it does hurt them.
2) Lack of efficient leaders.
As I understand it, a good many of the Protectors never forgave the Federated Suns for an offensive staged back during the Age of War. The fact that it was Davion troops who fought to crush the Concordant and drag it, kicking and screaming, into the Star League, didn't help. These Protectors ignored higher learning, research, and other matters to concentrate on military preparedness, including a variety of costly and near pointless projects to build defensive terrain on border worlds.
3) Relative resource differences.
Compared to even House Liao, the smallest of the Successor States, the Taurian Concordant controls a small number of worlds. They also did not seek to increase this number much during periods in which their enemies were busy elsewhere. Probably due to factor two.
4) Relative military size.
Perhaps the Taurians fielded divisions at one point, but at the fall of the League, this was not true. And once the Star League units no longer garrisoned their worlds, the Taurians were left, very abuptly, to defend themselves. Pirates likely had a field day.
5) Miscellaneous Factors.
I know not all the details, but pirates were not the only concern that slowly whittled down the Taurians. For instance, on at least one occasion, the Taurian capital city was utterly destroyed by an asteroid strike. Many of their best factories and universities would have gone during this strike. After all, given the transportation power of the League, and at the time, Concordant, having a centralized university for such a small realm seemed like a great idea. Not so great now.
6) Operation Holy Shroud
Almost forgot this one. Whatever high tech had been spared by the Taurians, including scientists, universities and material, was probably brought low by Comstar, in their attempt to push man back to the stone age so they could step in and take control.
In addition, it should be pointed out that the Taurians have been an emerging power lately, including launching heavy assaults on the Federated Suns with the intention of taking back the Pleiades Cluster. The Taurians have come in like a raging bull, so to speak, and pressed the Federated troops there hard.
More so because the Taurian Concordant never signed the Ares Conventions, and has, at differing points, attempted to use nuclear weapons on the defenders.
*shrugs* In the end, it is your choice to accept fiction as it is written, or to write your own. In this way, nothing in the universe is ever really dead.
*lopsided smile* Those who follow the great houses have our own losses as well, just as incomprehensible. I saw the mighty Federated Commonwealth, and the dreams of Hanse Davion, shattered by petty, bickering children. I saw a similar fate happen to the noble Second Star League, in a laughably short time. But what else can we do, but look for an honorable leader, and follow them into the hells of war to attempt to keep our own faint light of freedom aloft?
_________________
Jarylan Blackwell
"What the...?! Where did you get THAT?!"
"Creative aquisition."
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