Coreward Confederacy

Overview
The Coreward Confederacy was a primitive state located in the coreward section of the Deep Periphery, near the Aquila Rift.

History
The region of space known in modern times as the Coreward Confederacy has hosted a number of small and relatively short-lived factions:

Autocracy of New Virginia and the Virginian Union
Jonathan Chaffins II founded the Coreward Confederacy - then called the Autocracy of New Virginia - in 2371. The extremely wealthy owner of Chaffins Colonial Development Corporation, a key player in the investment and colonization boom of First and Second Exoduses, the rich and utterly spoiled Chaffins spent the ever increasing wealth his father's investments earned in profligate fashion, of which the Autocracy was the most grandiose. Displeased at having to yield sovereignty to local governments on his colonial holdings, Chaffins created the Autocracy to allow him rule a private empire with him as a king, locating eight worlds near the Aquila Rift far from the oversight of the Terran government and taking great pains to obscure their location and discovery. Despite the distance, backed by a corporate empire specialized in developing colonies, Chaffins had no difficulty in arranging his private empire. Unfortunately while an able corporate CEO, Chaffins was ill-prepared to rule as a king, alienating the population of the Autocracy in short order.

In a move that would effectively doom the region to a future of stagnation, Chaffin's last grasp at power (before his lynching) was to scuttle most of the Autocracy JumpShip fleet — excepting, of course, his private yacht, the M. L. Crassus, which possessed 152 tons of gold and platinum furnishings. Virtually marooned in the unknown region and with Chaffin's heirs more interested in battling over his estate in the Inner Sphere than reclaiming control, the colonists replaced his Autocracy with a standard federal republic (using boilerplate from Chaffins' CDC government handbooks) and making their lives on the eight worlds of the newly inaugurated Virginian Union. Unfortunately all eight systems were established with some degree of industrial over-specialization and the loss of most of the colony JumpShips would prove crippling, technology on the worlds of the Union decaying to sustainable twentieth century levels as their growth slowed to a crawl. With virtually no means of maintaining a connection between the worlds, the concept of the Union as an interstellar power was a non-entity by the twenty-sixth century, each world turning inward with increasing balkanization.

Rim Worlds Republic Outpost #27 and the Coreward Confederacy
The Union's long isolation ended only slightly when the nearby Rim Worlds Republic discovered the Union colonies in the early 2700s. Swiftly absorbing the Union as a hidden state, listing it as a settled district within its borders and sending false descriptions to Star League cartographers, Stefan Amaris would ultimately use the Union's eight worlds as secret training centers for his military under the blanket title of Rim Worlds Republic Outpost #27. Confident in his total control of the region to rule them in benign fashion, Amaris' offer of advanced technology brought new economic and industrial vitality to the people of the former Union, as the Republic's military constructed perfect replicas of entire Terran Hegemony cities in preparation for Operation APOTHEOSIS. During this period two shipyards would be constructed, finally ending the transportation shortages that doomed the Union, along with sizable warehouses stored with material secretly constructed and acquired for Amaris' coup. Aside from their unknowing use as test-subjects to non-lethal biochemical agents, the population of the Outpost worlds had no reason to fear the Republic's training operation or cause to question the ultimate goal of Stefan Amaris' planning, their lack of Hyperpulse Generators ensuring they were kept in the dark as to the horrors the new Emperor would soon inflict on the Star League.

This lack of knowledge would result in a rude awakening when millions of fanatical die hard Republican refugees arrived in the wake of the Star League Defense Force invasion and Lyran Commonwealth absorption of the Republic. The sizable increase in population was welcomed at first, but it soon became clear that these refugees - including a number of BattleMech armed troops - were not interested in integration but in the subjugation and conquest of the region. The local population were forcibly united with the Republicans in an increasingly centralized shared-power state, ensuring the Outpost worlds a unity akin to that of the early days of the Virginian Union, but also giving rise to demagogues and the oppression of much of the civil rights the people took for granted. By 2798 the refugee threat was supposedly ended and the Virginian Union was reborn - only to be torn apart by civil war in 2816. Much like the Great Houses during the early Succession Wars, both sides in the civil war would unleash (fairly primitive) nuclear weapons against each other as they sought to seize what resources and material they could or deny it to their opponents. By the time it was over in the mid-twenty-ninth century, the two shipyards were destroyed and the storehouses stripped, with the Coreward Confederacy rising from the ashes. In many respects the new entity was the old Virginian Union in all but name, a feeble and powerless organization that again was unable to expand or even maintain strong ties between its member worlds due to lack of transportation assets.

The modern Confederacy
ComStar's Explorer Corps found Outpost #27 in 3034 after stumbling over Confederacy navigational buoys and the wrecked shipyards. The reports of a Rim Worlds fleet facility was initially electrifying to the First Circuit, with ROM wasting no time taking over control of contact with the Confederacy and the investigation of the region, but a ham-fisted attempt to subvert the government to ComStar control failed completely, triggering a wave of xenophobia as well as the creation of a new constitution and a more centralized government. Retreating to lick its wounds, the value of a hidden empire and shipyards it hoped could be restored led ComStar to continue to focus on the region, periodically trying to land ROM operatives and drawing up plans to conquer the Confederacy through direct military action, plans which would be abruptly dropped when the Clans invaded the Inner Sphere.

ComStar would unwittingly reveal the existence of Outpost #27 and the Confederacy following the ComStar Schism, with the release of much of the Order's historical data and Explorer Corps charts in 3055. Quickly recalling many of the first star maps of the Deep Periphery, the amended charts omitted Outpost #27, but the damage had been done. People who attempted to question ComStar and the Explorer Corps on the appearance and disappearance of a realm the size of the Circinus Federation were either ignored or received apologies for the "error", with one low-ranking and frustrated Acolyte on Pesht floating the idea that the entire thing had been another example of Word of Blake "monkey warfare" to introduce errors and undermine trust in the Secular ComStar. Their interest piqued, House Steiner, House Kurita and Interstellar Expeditions all sent scout missions to follow-up on the mysterious Outpost #27 between 3074 to 3076, making limited diplomatic contacts with the Confederacy. The Word of Blake also apparently attempted to take-up where the old ComStar left off, but the Jihad prompted it to devote its resources elsewhere and the Manei Domini operatives assigned to the region were redeployed.

The modern Confederacy has a technology level roughly equal to that of the Terran Alliance and is governed as an anti-feudal federal republic paranoid about investing too much power in any one man. Though personal freedoms remain relatively secure and few citizens do not receive food or medical care, the realm suffers from heavy bureaucracy and large state-monopolized industries, resulting in heavily restricted economic policies that prevent entrepreneurs from challenging the status quo. The one bright light in ComStar's attempted meddling and the Confederacy's lifeline in improving its lot is its sole JumpShip refit and repair yard, a slapdash affair restored to function after contact with the Blessed Order. Just barely able to cope with maintaining the Confederacy's meager state-owned transportation fleet, like many state-owned enterprises the facility is heavily overstaffed and chronically over budget by as much as 500 percent or more. Militarily, the Confederacy lacks BattleMechs and only possesses a modest number of primitive Aerospace fighters and armored vehicles, all of which are produced by local industries heavily regulated by the central government.