Capellan Confederation

Capellan Confederation
Capital	Sian
Official Languages	Han Chinese, Russian, Arabic, English
Size	217 controlled worlds
Head of State	Chancellor
Governmental Structure	Maoist Feudalism
Military Force	Capellan Confederation Armed Forces

"Guerilla leaders spend a great deal more time in organization, instruction, agitation, and propaganda work than they do fighting, for their most important job is to win over the people."

– Mao Zedong

In the Battletech universe, the Capellan Confederation is one of the five successor states of the Inner Sphere and it's designated Punching Bag which is under the de facto 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 forming an alternative anarchist society and doing terrorism against “Terran Alliance corruption,” 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 of Capella; 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. Technically it's not a hereditary post, but in practice it's firmly in Liao's pocket. 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 staying 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.

• Franco Liao: Founder of the Confederation and its first Chancellor. Ended the corruption and instability that marred the Commonality, and moved the capital from Capella to Sian after the Davions tried to take it over, but not before evacuating and bombing the shit out of the planet while the FedRat forces could only stand there and watch in horror, obliterating the hell out of them and 2000 Capellans that didn't get the memo.
• Candace Liao: Retired MechWarrior, daughter of the infamously unhinged Maximilian "Mad Max" Liao and sister of the even crazier Romano. Candace saw the madness that ran on her family and sought to protect the Confederation's future from her father by seceding St. Ives and becoming a neutral ally of the FedRats during the Fourth Succession War. She also had myomer tits due to a breast cancer, which saved her life when her sister tried to have her killed. Her husband Justin wasn't so lucky, which enraged Candace so much she went all the way back to Sian to murderize Romano and her lover, AFTER killing the assassin herself. A shrewd politician with a strong love for her people, she single-handedly saved the Capellans' asses from getitng nommed by the Davions and placed her nephew Sun Tzu in charge, which would come back to haunt her in her final years.
• 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 and got voted in as First Lord of the Second Star League. The thing that made him dangerous was that he was capable of playing the fool to make people underestimate him before using cunning strategies to turn the tables on his rivals. The fact many other nobles among the Great Houses didn’t pay much attention to him helped a lot.

Society

On paper the Capellan Confederation is Egalitarian and Socialist. In practice it falls short of those goals. Most glaringly 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 by IS standards. 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 lose 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. Sun-Tzu Liao added some basic provisions for servitors improving their situation, though it's still a pretty bum lot.

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 Policy (Chinese: Xin Sheng) under Sun Tzu Liao 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. It also helped that the Maskirovka intelligence agency’s been tasked with monitoring the CCAF officer corps’ mental health to reassign afflicted officers to mental rehabilitation before they exhibit symptoms on the battlefield.

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. There used to employ Northwind Highlanders mercenaries, which got pawned off to the Republic of the Sphere. Due to their comparative scarcity in their ranks; the Capellans have almost exclusively used light and medium class mechs as a matter of principal due to their low cost, if they even bother to use them at all. 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 in battle.

Notable Mechs

• UrbanMech - embodying the Capellan's resource deprived but scrappy nature. The Urbanmech found life in the Capellan Confederations' military not out of favoritism but necessity due to a lack of resources. In addition, the Confederation's typical use of unconventional warfare meshed well with the UrbanMech's specialization in urban guerilla warfare. The most well-known Capellan variant is the UM-R60L, which replaces the AC/10 with a horrifically deadly AC/20 (capable of instakilling Lights and Mediums, and one of the few guns that can make an Assault 'Mech shiver in fear), at the cost of very, very low ammo capacity.
• Firebee - The first-ever Capellan Battlemech design, clearly inspired by the question "What if the Stinger mech was made by a cartoon supervillain?" It's a nasty little anti-vehicle Light Mech with a Large Laser, and four Maui SRM-2 launchers, with standard and special inferno missile compatibility. Sun-Zu Liao had a liking for this thing, and so he had an upgraded version put into production with the Guardian ECM Suite and Stealth Armor. Eventually got a hard upgrade in the Yinghuochong, which is built on the same chassis.
• Cataphract - Starting off as a FrankenMech before being standardized, it's an example of the "making do" aspect of the Capellan military. It exists essentially as a serial production mech cobbled together from the parts of Shadow Hawk, Phoenix Hawk, and Marauder chassis that were still available from the remaining factories. Left arm from one, right arm from another, that sort of thing. While it is pretty ramshackle as a matter of design, it's got plenty of armor, and it's pair of Autocannons, an AC/5 and an LB-X AC/10, are quite dangerous, though a critical flaw is it runs out of ammo fast.
• Raven - A light mech which emphasizes the guerilla aspect of the Capellan military. It has the honor of being considered one of the first original designs in centuries, and was the first Electronic Warfare specialist mech developed since the Succession Wars cooled down. It doesn't do a whole lot of damage, but in fairness it isn't really intended to, being more of a support and defensive role.
• Ti Ts'ang - The "signature" mech of the Confederation, in that it's usually the one used in a lot of Confederation art. Developed at Sun-Tzu Liao's personal request; It's a heavy mech heavily inspired by Han Dynasty Chinese Armor, and it reflects a lot of Sun-Tzu's personal tastes in warfare; it's a medium/close-range specialist designed to be as high-tech and dangerous as the Capellans could make it, and plopping five ER-Medium Lasers, four ER-Small Lasers, and a fucking battleaxe into it sure as shit does the trick on that. And just to make sure it's a priority target, it has a TAG system integrated into it; which means it can call airstrikes down on unsuspecting heads.
• Vindicator - One of the Confederation's most iconic mechs. Built in the early Succession Wars the mech is designed to strike at targets at any range. Its main armament is a PPC, backed with and LRM-5 to snipe at long range. Along with Medium and Small Laser to fight at short range.
• Yu Huang - The Command-Assault Mech of House Liao's maddened dreams come to life. It's intended to be the emperor of the battlefield, and Sun-Tzu Liao's specifications ensure it gets damn close to that; packing it with 17 tons of armor, an ER-PPC and LRM-10 missile system for long range, and Two Medium Lasers, one Medium Pulse laser, and an Autocannon/20 for anything stupid enough to try fighting it at short-range.