Scorpion Empire

Scorpion Empire
Faction Profile
Time period:	3141 – present
Classification:	Clan based Deep Periphery nation
Controlled systems:	45
Capital world:	Braunschweig Valencia (formerly)
Ruler title:	Khan zarKhan 3151+
Military:	Imperio Militar del Escorpión
Secret Service:	Clan Goliath Scorpion Watch

The Scorpion Empire is a Deep Periphery military power, created in the mid-thirty-second century after the Escorpión Imperio conquered the Hanseatic League and unified the Hansa with the peoples of Clan Goliath Scorpion, Nueva Castile, and the Umayyad Caliphate.

History

After Clan Goliath Scorpion was Abjured from Clan Space in December 3078, it evacuated most of its assets to Waypoint 531 in the Deep Periphery. A Galaxy of solahma, Watch personnel, police subcaste, and malcontents remained in rearguard, and were ultimately overrun and destroyed by Clans Star Adder and Cloud Cobra. Under Khan Colin Yeh, the surviving Scorpions invaded and conquered Nueva Castile and the Umayyad Caliphate, establishing the Escorpión Imperio in 3080. The Scorpions chose to integrate the Castilians and Umayyads into their Clan and its caste system using the Ghost Bear-Rasalhague model and to rule as partners rather than as conquerors. The Scorpions modified it somewhat from Clan norms, adding two new castes, the support and garrison castes, to augment the customary technician, scientist, merchant, and laborer castes.

The integration did not go smoothly over the next five years though, as the Scorpions struggled to break decades of mistrust between the formerly hostile Umayyads and Castilians by imposing the Clan doctrine of "might makes right" for conflict resolution. With a more developed and refined feudal society governed by ranked nobility, the Castilians adapted more easily to the system of Clan honor. But the Umayyads despised their general placement within the lower castes, and fostered an underground resistance movement that engaged in rioting and terrorism against the Imperio, such as murdering a Scorpion Head Merchant in broad daylight. To complicate matters, Clan Watch agents from the Cloud Cobras, Coyotes, and Stone Lions infiltrated the Escorpión Imperio to gather intelligence and spread rumors about the Umayyad's alleged ancestry to the Not-Named-Clan. In order to alleviate the problems and promote unity, the Scorpions decided to accelerate planning for the invasion and conquest of the Umayyads' and Castilians' mutually hated foe, the Hanseatic League.

Shaping the Imperio

Over the next sixty years, the Scorpions carefully developed and shaped the Imperio into a powerful Periphery nation by fusing the Castilians and Umayyads together into the ruling Goliath Scorpion caste and honor systems, by crushing Umayyad dissent, rioting, and terrorism, and killing or capturing and expelling enemy Clan Watch agents back to the Homeworlds. To further secure the Castilians' and Umayyads' investment and cooperation within the Imperio, the Goliath Scorpions also created new Bloodnames from their best warriors for the Clan's breeding program as a gesture of goodwill. Under Khan Connor Rood many warriors that were lost in the Ice Hellion's retreat from the Inner sphere were located and added to the Imperio's Touman. The Scorpions also prioritized the education of Umayyad and Castilian students via Trials of Worth placing the winners in universities run by the Scientist Caste, resulting in construction of modern Clan production facilities so that they could rebuild their Touman, build new infrastructure, hyperpulse generators, and manufacturing capacity to raise the Imperio's technology level to the 32nd century standards, and open new schools and academies to instruct and train its citizens and warriors the Clan way. Khan Enrico Kirov, who succeeded Khan Connor Rood in 3108, also shifted the Scorpions' capital to Valencia, sparking a technological and cultural revolution there and continued the previous Khan's policy of establishing new colonies on seven worlds closer to the Hanseatic worlds. Kirov also preserved the wisdom and experience of his older Scorpion warriors, particularly Galaxy Commanders, by creating the reKhan position and reassigning them there as they reached middle age rather than consigning them to solahma units. Likewise, he relaxed many of the traditional Clan customs and restrictions among the castes to further ease the integration of the Castilians and Umayyads into Imperio society. Although it took much time, Kirov's rebuilding and reform program paid off greatly as the Imperio regained the Scorpion's capability to produce Clan technology, including OmniMechs. By 3140, the Goliath Scorpions had recovered much of their pre-Abjuration strength and were ready to finally fall upon the Hanseatic League.

Campaign against the League

While the Escorpión Imperio spent decades preparing for the inevitable invasion, the 29-world Hanseatic League recognized this rising new threat and improved its own Hanseatic Defense Force (HDF), investing heavily in its military at the expense of its economy and the quality of life of its people. Among its preparations were the hiring of experienced officers and mercenaries from the Lyran Commonwealth and the expansion of the HDF to include three additional Regional Defense Forces (RDFs) and three new Convoy Defense Forces (CDFs).

Upon the destruction of a group of Seekers detected by the Hansa on Bergen, Khan Magon Scott determined that retaliation could not be kept at mere raiding but total conquest. The Escorpión Imperio's invasion finally came in January 3141 when six fully integrated Galaxies of Goliath Scorpion, Umayyad, and Castilian troops, led by Khan Magon Scott, stormed into the League to take on its nine RDFs and its three CDFs, under the overall command of Captain-Marshal Rudolf Schmidt. The ensuing campaign was brutal with heavy losses on both sides. In July, the Imperio forces reached the League capital of Bremen, sparking the most savage fighting of the Hanseatic Crusade, which lasted three grinding months.

On 12 October, known as "Red Saturday," Goliath Scorpion Elementals finally penetrated the capitol in Freie Hansestadt and captured the governing Council of Merchants. When the Scorpions demanded a general surrender, the council members committed suicide instead by detonating "failsafe" explosives lining the tunnels beneath the city. The resulting explosion leveled the capitol building and much of the city, killing the council members, their Elemental captors, and countless civilians. Much of the Imperio's Tau Galaxy and the League's RDF 3 were also destroyed.

Stunned by the devastation and unaware of the Council’s final decision, as the League's last remaining authority, Schmidt ordered all Hansa forces to immediately cease fire and to lay down their arms. But the enraged survivors of RDF 3, believing the Scorpions to be responsible for the mass destruction, ignored him and instead launched vicious suicidal attacks against the survivors of Tau Galaxy as well as Hellion Galaxy, then conducting a flank maneuver outside the blast area, bringing about the final Battle for Freie Hansestadt. The Scorpions, equally outraged by the senseless waste, counterattacked and destroyed the RDF 3-remnant to the last soldier. The League's capital city thus fell and resistance quickly collapsed on Bremen, leaving the planet firmly in Imperio control.

While the Imperio's Grunt Galaxy took over the administration of Bremen, Alpha and Hellion Galaxies moved to secure the League's remaining worlds that were yet to be pacified. Despite Schmidt's surrender order that was broadcast throughout the rest of the League by Hansa courier JumpShips, diehard HDF remnants, stateless mercenaries, corporate security troops, and partisan and militia forces refused, choosing instead to fight to the bitter end. On Antwerp, the defenders successfully employed mines, artillery, and fortifications to stymie the Scorpions for two months. These tactics were also used by the other holdout worlds as the Scorpions subdued them one by one, causing considerable destruction in the process. The Hansa diehards' efforts proved futile though and the final surrender took place on Thorn in March 3142. So after fifteen months of heroic defense the Hanseatic League was no more.

Birth of an Empire

Following the conquest in 3142, Khan Scott declared the end of the Escorpión Imperio and the creation of the Scorpion Empire, comprising the territories of both the former Imperio and the League and bringing the Hansa's vast military industries and merchant trading networks under Scorpion control. Scott's victory secured, Clan Goliath Scorpion cemented itself, its influence, and reputation as an undisputed power in the Deep Periphery.

Bibliography

• Operational Turning Points: Hanseatic Crusade
• The Wars of Reaving
• The Wars of Reaving Supplemental