Rim War

History

The Rim War was a border conflict between the early Capellan Confederation and the Taurian Concordat officially declared in 2417 and ended by truce in 2423. But the actual 'beginning' was in 2397, when Chancellor Kurnath Liao began attempting to push the Taurian Concordat out of the region Rimwards of the Confederation. The Concordat, under Protectors Richard Calderon and later Daniel Calderon, had established several military outposts/Naval bases along their borders with the Inner Sphere to provide advanced warning in case of Inner Sphere (Davion) attack. Kurnath Liao sought those developed sites to grow his nation at the expense of the Concordat's. The Capellan Navy began raiding those and other Concordat worlds and continued off-and-on for 20 years, not always surviving contact with the Taurian Navy. But these raids became increasingly bloody under Kurnath's successor Chancellor Arden Baxter.

Under Baxter the Capellan Confederation officially declared war on the Taurian Concordat in 2417. The young and ambitious Capellan officers sought to outdo each other in their victories, leading to savage reprisals and wholesale slaughter of civilians when they would not submit to Capellan rule. The Taurians very quickly followed suit, even perpetrating worse cruelties on captured Capellans. These Pyrrhic 'victories' gained Chancellor Baxter the worlds of Zanzibar, Corodiz and Mendham but had cost his nation far more than the Confederation could keep paying. By early 2422 Baxter was forced to call a halt to the fighting to save his own political future. By then Amanda Calderon was Protector and with her former Regent Admiral Sigur Fonn she negotiated an end to the war. But Baxter attempted to go further that just peace; he proposed a 'thousand world alliance' of the Confederation and Concordat as well as the smaller interstellar entities between them. Advised by Admiral Fonn, Amanda rejected this blatantly anti-Marik offer, instead choosing a path of neutrality.

Despite the loss/gain of a few barely habitat worlds, the Rim War's greatest legacy was the huge loss of life and utterly honor-less fighting. Because of the horrors the Rim War inflicted on their people, neither Admiral Sigur Fonn nor his ward Amanda Calderon signed the Ares Conventions in 2412, making the Taurian Concordat the only major power of that era (and current era) to not do so.

Bibliography

• Field Manual: Periphery
• House Davion (The Federated Suns)
• House Liao (The Capellan Confederation)
• The Periphery (sourcebook)

Dates

• Start Date - 2417
• End Date - 2423