Editing Republic of the Sphere (section)

== History ==
Coming out of the [[Word of Blake|Jihad]], every single Inner Sphere state, with some exceptions here or there, were exhausted from centuries of war. They had generations of war orphans to deal with, devastated infrastructure, Three [[The Clans|Clans]] (well, more like two once Ghost Bear shacked up with the [[Free Rasalhague Republic|Rasalhagues]]) parked in their section of space, and after the Jihad, hundreds of worlds that either needed to be cleaned up or straight up re-settled thanks to the devastation brought about by the [[Word of Blake]]. And with that done, the feeling then was that if things returned to "business as usual", there'd be another [[Succession Wars|Succession War]], and this one would probably cripple the Inner Sphere for good and allow the Clans, who they still had quite a lot of animosity towards, to waltz in. The hero of the Jihad, Devlin Stone, was now commander of an army that rivalled that of the SLDF in it's heyday, and suggested to all that they come to Terra to hash out the creation of a buffer state between all parties; a Republic of the Inner Sphere parked right in the middle of it. Naturally ready for a few decades of peace (and probably not interested in arguing with the guy who could easily bulldoze them if they resisted), everybody but the [[Capellan Confederation]] was willing to allow this creation to exist, but the Capellans were naturally brought to the table by force to sign the treaty. The Treaty ceded over 200 worlds, many of whom were former WoB Protectorate space, directly to the newfound Republic, with Devlin Stone as it's head of state; the Exarch. He took office in 3081.

Right off the bat, two major social reforms began to help along the process of keeping the peace; a resettlement campaign which allowed for massive intermixing of cultures and after years of hard work, utterly erased old divides and hatreds from centuries of Great House rule, and a massive de-militarizing campaign, which typically took the form of all the really good BattleMechs ending up in the Republic Armed Forces, and the rest sold for scrap, recycling the materials altogether, or turned into IndustrialMechs or museum pieces. Owners were usually motivated for either the rights to become a free citizen of the Republic, or a massive paycheck; sometimes both if the 'Mech was good enough. These measures, combined with the now much more relative distance of the great houses, were more than enough to keep the Inner Sphere in a relative state of peace for over half a century. But like all major giant states in the Inner Sphere, it couldn't last.