Capellan Confederation

The Capellan Confederation is one of the five successor states of the Inner Sphere and it's designated Punching Bag which is under the defacto leadership of House Liao. It is mostly modeled after China (a mash up of Imperial and Communist) with some Russian Influence.

Origins

Unlike the other states that already had ruling families who used charisma, charm, and violence to get their seals stamped onto their section of space, the Capellan Confederation's history has been marred from the beginning with near-constant shitflinging at the Inner Sphere powers and it's own neighbors, and especially the Free Worlds League. The Confederation began life as the Capellan Hegemony, getting into pissing contests with a neighbor the Sarna Supremacy over and over again, causing a number of the inner sphere powers to come down there and beat some sense into those in the Capellan Marches. Naturally, this caused quite a bit of annoyance from pretty much everybody, but especially the myriad worlds within the Marches, most notably Capella itself, which had been founded on the controversial, somewhat insane principals of one Elias Liao, who had fled Terran space after doing a terrorism, and so they banded together to keep the Inner Sphere's hands out of their respective pots, creating the Capellan Commonality.

While the myriad worlds grew closer and closer together; all noblemen feared a possible invasion from the larger powers, and it wasn't necessarily an empty threat. The Capellan Commonality was wildly corrupt and poorly organized, and was often found wanting when it came to military might. Finally, during a peacekeeping mission from the FedSun, one of Elias Liao's descendants brought all of the leaders of the Commonality together, and suggested that all of the myriad worlds of the Commonality surrender their autonomy to a single leader and single party politik, and more or less founded the Capellan Confederation within a month of this meeting, beating back the FedSun peacekeeping forces, and made sure everyone took them seriously by orbitally bombarding up their own fucking capital world; moving all the important shit to the planet of Sian. And it is there that the Capellan Confederation solidified their existence.

House Liao

The Confederation's head of state is the Chancellor, and that position has historically been run by House Liao. While many of the other houses have had their bad seeds before eventually getting their shit together, House Liao has stood out for starting crazy, and stayed crazy. Elias Liao had his third eye opened in Tibet, and that particular trait has followed it's way down the line, with nutcases, despots, and full-on basket cases that it's actually easier to list the not-crazy ones.

• Sun Tzu Liao: The face that appears besides "Magnificent Bastard" in Inner Sphere dictionaries. Managed to get the Capellan Confederation back on it's feet after numerous defeats suffered in the first half of the 31st century.

Society

On paper the Capellan Confederation is Egalitarian and Socialist. In practice it falls short of those goals. There is a hereditary nobility which holds the political power within the centralized apparatus of the Capellan State as well as various corporations. Beyond that, the Citizens of the Capellan Confederation do benefit from a fairly comprehensive welfare state and enjoy peaceful and comfortable lives with a comparatively high standard of living and social mobility. The issue is that Citizenship in the Capellan Confederation is not something your born into and if you don't earn it (either by not doing well in school or being newly conquered, also you can loose it as a punishment), you're a Servitor. No, not that sort of Servitor (thank god) but part of an oppressed underclass who does the crap work for bare basic wages as the serfs of the nobility. The only consolation is that it is possible (if difficult) for servitors to earn citizenship and their kids have the same education and opportunities to earn citizenship as everyone else in the confederation.

For awhile state propaganda was able to stem the tide of the many, many, many failures of the Succession Wars, but eventually pride amongst the citizens of the Confederation began to wane and the ruling classes attempted to keep everybody in line with tighter controls on media, food, and employment, which were all almost universally reversed under Sun-Tzu Liao, in what became his great social work known as the Xin Sheng, or New Rebirth. With it, more freedoms were given to the individual and more pride of their Han Chinese heritage was instilled into the populace. This served to stem the tide of unrest, but it also led to non-asian citizens catching shit for not being Glorious Han.

Military

Capellans have long suffered as the designated villains of the IS, and as villains used to lose, for a long time, they kept losing worlds, including many important industrial ones. This has forced the Capellan armed forces to make do with what they have, or go the sneaky way if they ever wanted to accomplish something. Part of the problem for them is that House Liao has historically mistrusted their military and often hamstrung it by doing all sorts of inane things to muck up the chain of command, and their officer structure meant that everyone deferred to their superior's word when on the battlefield all the way up, meaning that often the Capellan higher ranks were paralyzed if they couldn't get in touch with Central Command, and often let Mercs be general for a day. And that's just if they were lucky. If they weren't, they'd get an officer who'd come down with what is known as "Hopeless Battle Syndrome", where they will go commit a suicidal last stand to die in a blaze of glory rather than be court-martialed or disciplined for failure. It took the Resurgence for the Confederation to finally start seeing some changes for the better in their armed forces, particularly under the fierce building up under Daoshen Liao.

The only real x-factors the Capellans have had over the years is their tank divisions and their warrior houses. The Armor Divisions, who have spooked the armies of the IS over and over and over again, are often the most well trained and well equipped among the entire Inner Sphere, as they were cheap, easier to put together than Mechs, and more importantly, effectively often rolled out of the factory to fight Mechs. The Warrior Houses are semi-religious elite combined-arms regiments that are trained away from the Armed Forces in seclusion until they are unleashed onto unsuspecting battlefields as the hammer of House Liao. Those who perform well are then often drawn into the Army's own elite squadrons that do mostly the same shit except with some Commissar powers; The Death Commandos.

Due to their relative scarcity; the Capellans have almost exclusively used light and medium class mechs as a matter of principal due to their relative easy of cost, if they even bother to use them at all. An example of the "making do" aspect of their military is the Cataphract heavy mech, which is essentially a serial production mech cobbled together from the parts that were still available from the remaining factories. Left arm from one, right arm from another, that sort of thing. An example of the "Sneaky way" of things is the Raven mech, which was the first EW specialist mech developed since the succession wars cooled down.

Modern Capellan mechs developed after the resurgence are often noted for possessing advanced camouflaged armor, and thanks to some Periphery help have been able to put together mechs that can finally start creating meaningful gains for the Confederation.