Section IV: The Taurian Connection

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The official narrative regarding the Taurian Concordat, as promulgated by New Avalon and uncritically repeated by most Inner Sphere media, can be summarized simply: the Taurians are paranoid, aggressive, unstable, and irrationally hostile to the Federated Suns.

This narrative is propaganda. We will explain why.

Why Taurians Distrust Davions

The Taurian Concordat was founded in 2335, making it older than the Federated Suns itself. For over eight centuries, it has maintained continuous self-governance, democratic institutions, and a standard of living that often exceeded Inner Sphere norms.

It has also been invaded by the Federated Suns or their allies on multiple occasions, subjected to brutal military occupation, stripped of territory by force, and treated as a legitimate target for aggression by every Davion government from Reynard to the present.

Let us review the history:

2369-2371: First Contact
The Federated Peacekeeping Forces encountered Taurian ships in 2369. The encounter turned violent, as encounters between heavily armed strangers often do. The Federated Suns launched "exploratory expeditions" into Taurian space — military probes by another name — prompting Protector Richard Calderon to declare emergency powers.

These emergency powers remained in effect until Richard's death in 2387. He was convinced, not unreasonably, that the Federated Suns intended to conquer his nation.

2573-2596: The Reunification War
The Star League — dominated by the Great Houses, including House Davion — decided that the Periphery states must be brought into the League by force. The Taurian Concordat, as the most advanced and best-defended Periphery nation, received special attention.

The war lasted over two decades. The Federated Suns provided substantial forces for the invasion, driven by what the official histories describe as a desire to "be finally rid of the Taurian distraction."

The Concordat fought with everything it had. Protector Mitchell Calderon's defense was skillful and determined. But numbers and resources eventually told. By 2596, the Concordat was broken.

What followed was territorial amputation. Choice worlds — the most economically valuable planets the Taurians had developed — were annexed by the Federated Suns as spoils of victory. The Concordat lost over half its territory and was reduced to a Star League "Territorial State," subject to League authority and League garrisons.

Protector Marantha Calderon committed suicide rather than live under occupation.

This history is not ancient. The Reunification War is remembered on every Taurian world, taught in every Taurian school, commemorated on every Taurian memorial day. When Taurians say they do not trust the Federated Suns, they are not being irrational. They are remembering.

The "Instability" Myth

New Avalon's characterization of the Concordat as "unstable" rests on selective evidence and willful misinterpretation.

Yes, the Concordat has experienced political turbulence. So has every other nation in the Inner Sphere. The Federated Suns itself endured a civil war that killed millions within living memory. Somehow this does not result in the Federated Suns being labeled "unstable."

Yes, certain Taurian Protectors have been aggressive toward the Federated Suns. Given the history outlined above, this aggression is not irrational — it is a defensive response to centuries of actual attacks. When a nation has been invaded repeatedly by its neighbor, suspicion of that neighbor is not paranoia. It is prudence.

Yes, the Concordat maintains a large military relative to its population. Again, given the history, this is sensible policy. The Taurians have learned that no one will defend them except themselves.

The "unstable Taurians" narrative serves Davion interests by delegitimizing Taurian concerns and justifying Davion aggression. It allows New Avalon to frame every conflict as Taurian irrationality rather than Taurian response to Davion provocation.

We reject this narrative. The evidence does not support it.

The Periphery March Relationship

The relationship between the Periphery March and the Taurian Concordat developed organically from shared circumstances and shared interests.

Both regions were neglected by their respective national governments. Both developed self-reliant economies out of necessity. Both valued practical independence over theoretical allegiance to distant capitals. Both had reason to distrust the powers that claimed to rule them.

Trade began during the First Succession War, when TriStar's shipping network discovered that Taurian merchants were among the few reliable partners available. While the Great Houses burned each other's worlds, the frontier regions kept trading.

Economic Exchange:

• TriStar shipping routes extend into Concordat space, carrying Memphis metals and processed goods to Taurian markets
• Taurian agricultural products and rare minerals flow in the opposite direction
• Shared investment in anti-piracy patrols protects both sides' commerce
• Joint ventures in asteroid mining leverage both nations' expertise

Cultural Ties:

• Student exchanges connect Memphis Mining Academy with Taurian universities
• Shared distrust of "core world" arrogance creates common ground
• Taurian democratic traditions resonate with Periphery March populism
• Intermarriage among merchant families is common enough that no one comments on it

Diplomatic Reality:

• No formal alliance exists — that would alarm New Avalon
• Both states stand as parallel guarantors of the Dominion Charter (3049) — commitments carefully made to the Dominions, never to each other
• "Benign neglect" arrangements ensure neither side raids the other
• Quiet mutual defense consultations occur regularly
• Shared intelligence on pirate movements and external threats benefits both regions

This relationship survived the Jihad intact. While canon histories describe nuclear exchanges and brutal warfare between the Federated Suns and the Concordat during this period, the Periphery March and its Taurian trading partners maintained their connections. TriStar shipping continued. Student exchanges continued. The relationship that both sides had built over centuries proved more durable than the Jihad's flames.

The Dominion Proving Ground

For three centuries the sneer from New Avalon was that March–Taurian friendship was merely commerce — that it would evaporate the moment it was asked to do anything difficult. Then it was asked to do something difficult, and it built a nation.

When the Tortuga Campaign ended in 3030 and the March found itself holding a conquered pirate kingdom that no Successor State had ever been willing to occupy (see: The Tortuga Dominions), the hardest problem on the ledger was not pirates. It was water. Tortuga Prime had spent four hundred and sixty years drinking from poisoned lakes, and nobody in the Federated Suns had the institutional knowledge to fix a hostile world. Somebody else did. No people in the Inner Sphere or Periphery know hostile-world colonization like the Taurian Concordat — and beginning in 3036, TriStar contracted Taurian engineering firms into the Dominions, chosen, we note with some satisfaction, precisely because Concordat companies could work rimward territory without New Avalon's fingerprints on the paperwork.

Taurian hydrologists became the first people in the planet's history to actually map Tortuga Prime's fossil reservoir, and delivered the finding that reframed occupation as rescue: at current drawdown, perhaps ninety years of water remained. The collaboration that followed — Taurian engineering, TriStar logistics and capital, New Avalon Institute of Science agro-genetics — was institutionalized in 3047 as the Trilateral Hydrological Commission, whose veterans went on to write much of the Dominion Charter's language on common resources. It is often observed that the Dominion's democracy was designed by people who had spent a decade arguing about water filtration budgets. It shows. In the best way. (See: Tortuga Prime.)

The Charter of 3049 then did the thing every diplomat in two capitals had called impossible for eight centuries: it placed AFFS garrison elements and Taurian Defense Force detachments on the same worlds, in the same defense rotation, as co-equal guarantors of a state constitutionally forbidden arms of its own — each guarantor's presence checking the other's ambitions. The Dominions are today the only place in known space where AFFS and Taurian regulars routinely serve within sight of each other in peacetime. Both governments find this useful. Neither will admit to valuing it. We will admit it for them.

The Gate Run

In 3066 a corsair squadron out of the Fugeres direction — flying, with grim nostalgia, Jolly Rogers colors three generations dead — attempted to squeeze the exile-trade convoys assembling at the New Gascony Gate, the Dominions' customs station at the frontier (see: New Gascony). The action lasted under an hour. The station's PPC batteries broke the corsairs' approach, and the pursuit was flown by AFFS and Taurian Concordat fighters from the same rotation, on the same tactical net — the first joint Davion–Taurian combat action in the history of either state.

Eight centuries of official enmity, and the first time Davion and Taurian pilots fired in the same direction, it was in defense of a customs house staffed by the descendants of kidnapped people and owned by a shipping company. The official histories of both states have declined to make anything of this. We are not official, and we will: the enmity is policy, not nature. Change the policy, and the nature follows inside a generation.

The Sherwood Ledger

Honesty — the debt we owe our readers that ComStar never paid its own — requires the other column of the ledger, and no world in the March carries a longer one than Sherwood (see: Sherwood). For a century the Concordat bankrolled the Titanium Blade pirates under Sherwood's canopy while New Avalon declined to help. And when the 132nd Royal Jump Infantry — the Sheriffs, the unit that finally beat the Blade and earned the planet's lasting love — was shipped into the Periphery Uprising, Taurian forces singled them out and destroyed them with exceptional brutality. Sherwood entered the Succession Wars with two grudges, and Taurian steel was one of them.

Sherwood has not forgotten, and we will not pretend otherwise on its behalf. When TriStar first contracted Taurian firms in the 3030s, the Sherwood delegation's assent was recorded in Commission minutes as "present." Sherwoodian representatives remain the frostiest seat at every dual-guarantor table, thawing at a rate their own diplomats describe as geological. And yet: the Taurian liaison office in Marion, opened 3052, keeps a photograph of the 132nd's memorial in its lobby. The Taurians placed it there. Sherwood noticed. That is how reconciliation actually works — not forgiveness by proclamation, but a photograph, noticed, over decades. We record the grudge and the photograph together, because a history that keeps only one of them is propaganda, whichever one it keeps.

What The Relationship Means

The Periphery March-Concordat connection demonstrates something that New Avalon prefers not to acknowledge: the Federated Suns' frontier regions have more in common with the Periphery than with the core worlds.

Citizens of Memphis have more in common with citizens of Taurus than with citizens of New Avalon. They face similar challenges, share similar values, and have been treated similarly by the powers that claim to govern them — which is to say, neglected when convenient and exploited when profitable.

This does not make the Periphery March disloyal to the Federated Suns. Loyalty and common sense are not mutually exclusive. The Periphery March remains part of the Federated Suns because leaving would be impractical and because, for all its flaws, the Federated Suns offers benefits that independence would not.

But let no one pretend that the Periphery March's loyalty is based on love of New Avalon or gratitude for Davion governance. It is based on calculation. And calculations can change.

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