Touring the Stars with Bertram Habeas
We began on Terra, millions of years ago. Today, mankind stretches out among the
stars of the Milky Way, touching thousands of worlds, as far from our home as Clan
space, more than 2,000 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,
let’s find the answers to these and many other fascinating questions together, as we
tour the stars!
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)
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.
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.
Sphere will take us to the Rasalhague Dominion, the peculiar fusion of Clan strength
with Inner Sphere diversity. I’m Bertram Habeas.
stars of the Milky Way, touching thousands of worlds, as far from our home as Clan
space, more than 2,000 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,
let’s find the answers to these and many other fascinating questions together, as we
tour the stars!
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.
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.
Sphere will take us to the Rasalhague Dominion, the peculiar fusion of Clan strength
with Inner Sphere diversity. I’m Bertram Habeas.