Elysian Fields

Description
An oddity even among the strange worlds of the Periphery, Elysian Fields was a private hold of the Inheritor philosophic movement. De facto a protectorate of the Oberon Confederation, it was later overun by the Clans.

Overview
The Elysian worlds (Elissa, Mangringaine, and Nyserta) are temperate planets maintained in their pristine wilderness state. The people supported themselves mainly as hunters and gatherers. Another small Elysian colony was established in the neighboring star system of Porthos, though that world was technically not under the protection of Hendrik III.

Politics
Foreswearing any military presence on their worlds, the Inheritors have entered into an agreement with the Oberon Confederation whereby Hendrik Grimm III guaranteed to protect these planets in exchange for emergency repair and shore-leave rights for Oberon ships and personnel. As the Elysian worlds had no commercial or geological value, few saw any need to violate their sanctity. Later Nyserta hosted a number of clandestine meetings between representatives of Hendrik Grimm III and various governments of the Inner Sphere, mainly House Steiner and House Kurita.

Clan Invasion
When the Clans began their invasion of the Inner Sphere their first targets were those worlds within the Periphery which fell within their invasion routes. However, due to lobbying by the various Clan Khans, ilKhan Leo Showers declared the entire Periphery open territory for any and all Clan units. Thus, while the Elysian Fields fell within the Clan Wolf invasion corridor, it was invaded by Clan Ghost Bear.

Ghost Bear interest in these worlds was sparked by Star Commander Swahla's discovery in old Star League records of Project Achilles, a top-secret research facility supposedly located somewhere within the Elysian Fields. While many groups such as Wolf's Dragoons and Snord's Irregulars had searched for these long-lost facilities, sealed away by the orders of Aleksandr Kerensky so that they may benefit the eventual return of the SLDF, none had searched the Periphery and it was hoped this cache remained intact. Star Commander Swahla informed her commanding officer, Star Captain Edwin Gilmour of the 312th Assault Trinary, 1st Bear Guards, of the information she had found. Star Captain Gilmour bid his entire Trinary, also known as the Silver Kodiaks, for the right to invade these worlds but was unopposed since most other commanders saw this as an attempt to win easy glory.

The Silver Kodiaks invaded first Mangringaine and Nyserta but met no resistance. With no standing defenses the local governments surrendered before Clan forces even approached their capital cities. On Elissa, where they expected to find the research facility, the Silver Kodiaks were surprised to discover a hyperpulse signal being transmitted, which they eventually located coming from a ComStar Class B HPG facility. They were too late to stop the brief distress signal, which mistakenly interpreted the Silver Kodiak's insignia of a bear's head in profile as a wolf's, leading to ComStar's eventual misunderstanding that Clan Wolf had conquered these worlds. Still the Clan warriors faced no other opposition to their conquest, and as they took in the beauty of lush tropical world at least one commented what a paradise Terra must be if such could be found in the Periphery.

Nearly a week was spent searching Elissa before the Silver Kodiaks discovered an extensive series of tunnels deep inside a mountain range, a potential lead in their search for the lost Project Achilles. Star Captain Gilmour personally led the exploration of these tunnels, but ultimately uncovered nothing but abandoned mines. Enraged at having wasted so much time chasing a false rumor he immediately challenged Star Captain Swahla to a Trial of Grievance, from which only Gilmour emerged alive, and promptly evacuated the Elysian Fields. Not even a token garrison was left on these worlds, a source of shame for the entire Clan, and it wouldn't be until after the Battle of Tukayyid that Galaxy Commander Conal Ward of Clan Wolf won these worlds in a Trial of Possession.

Elysian Fields was overseen by Clan Wolf from 3052 onwards. They didn't need to rule with a heavy hand however, as the One Star Faith was able to cooperate with the Clan.

The Dark Age
During the early thirty-first century the Elysian Fields had nominally been a collection of nature reserves, administered by the group known as the Inheritors, and protected by the Oberon Confederation. In truth, the Inheritors were increasingly withdrawing into the forest of the various worlds while the Oberon Confederation ruthlessly exploited the resources available on the various worlds. Conquest by the Clans left the Elysian Fields in much the same situation, except for one difference: the Clans did away with the fiction of Inheritor involvement in the administration of the Elysian Fields.

This would remain the case until the Clans collectively withdrew from the various Periphery regions that included areas such as the Elysian Fields. When the Clans withdrew, the population of the Elysian Fields had been divided into two major groupings; those who lived as subsistence farmers, and those who lived as hunter-gatherers. The inhabitants of the various worlds would continue to do so until a new conquerer arrived in the form of the Emperor Ned Piggot of Ferris. The last of the former rebel leaders to survive the departure of Clan Hell's Horses, Piggot responded to the formation of the nearby Republic of the Barrens and the ensuing attention that protostate attracted from the Clans by deciding that Ferris needed the resources of several worlds to ward off potential attacks, and decided to seize the worlds of the Elysian Fields to supply those resources.

Piggot's conquering army consisted of a battalion of tanks and infantry and was transported to the Elysian Fields in the lone JumpShip possessed by the Collective. Piggot arrived at Elissa first, before moving on to Manaringaine and Nyserta, seizing the abandoned spaceports on each world and declaring each planet to be a founding member of the Ferris Collective. The Inheritors initially watched Piggot's actions from the trees with bemusement, but Piggot began marketing the Collective aggressively in the Inner Sphere, attempting to compensate for the low population of Ferris by attracting settlers to the vast tracts of open land on the various worlds of his new Collective. With the Clans nearby and the distances involved, those attracted to the Collective were a mix of the desperate or the undesireable, and many of those ended up on the worlds of the Elysian Fields. The Inheritors responded by withdrawing when pushed, but an occasional hotheaded Inheritor would push back in turn, prompting a violent response from the Collective settlers.

In addition to withdrawing from the Elysian Fields, the Ghost Bear Dominion had further complicated matters by abandoning Porthos and by passing control of Santander V to the Elysian Fields. This made little difference to Porthos, which had remained a primitive and barely-developed world, but Santander V had been a hellhole controlled by a brutal bandit king before the arrival of Clan Smoke Jaguar. The Smoke Jaguars had wiped out the pirate population and their dependents and the population of the planet at the end of the Jihad consisted largely of immigrants from the Clans. The Ghost Bears evacuated the civilians, but were uncomfortable having a habitable world on their border that could - or would - attract attention from pirates. Passing control of Santander V to the Inheritors solved the problem for the Ghost Bears, and groups of Inheritors moved to the world, occupying the various abandoned settlements. These two worlds formed a new state known as the Havens.

Under the leadership of Warden Will Hutardo - a spiritual leader as much as a political leader - the Elysian Inheritors remained less militant than their Taurian cousins and continued to live a primitive lifestyle akin to the Amish peoples of ancient Terra. The Ghost Bears maintained an interest in the Havens after their departure and willingly taught the population how to maintain and deploy surveillance equipment, taking advantage of the excellent hunting and tracking abilities of the Inheritors to keep the Watch informed of events. In addition to the efforts made by the Watch to ingratiate itself with the population the Dominion maintained an HPG station and an embassy on both planets, allowing the two worlds to communicate with each other and other people. By 3095 the Inheritors on both worlds were continuing to live in peace, although some maintained the dream of freeing the Inheritor population trapped within the Ferris Collective.