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The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« on: June 18, 2009, 09:35:32 AM »
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THE TRUE HISTORY
OF THE
TAURIAN CONCORDAT
AS TOLD BY
ARTHUR DILLENGER
PROFESSOR EMERTIUS
UNIVERSITY OF TAURUS
Copyright 3042, Concordat Free Press
Jamestown
Introduction
History, it is said, is seen through the prism of the victor. Such is the case with our own Concordat, a Star Nation that predates all of the other Great Houses of both the Inner Sphere and the Periphery, saving only the Terran Alliance itself. Our very history has been rewritten first by the propagandists of the Star League, and then by the hooded Acolytes of ComStar. It has been distorted for use by those who wish to make our realm seem filled with men and women driven by paranoia and rage. To the average citizen of the Inner Sphere, the Taurian Concordat appears to be a desolate place, inhabited only by those who are unable to flee to better worlds. They are told—those citizens—that they are better off than the denizens of the Periphery States; a lawless group of malcontents that breed pirates and raid each other for valuable water. And in some sections of the Periphery that may well be true.
But it is not true in the Concordat that I know and that I love. We value freedom, and the ability to act as we so choose; we are served by our government and not vice versa. We have proud cities and institutions of learning, and our standard of living is in many instances better than those who would lord over us. Our industries have suffered trials and tribulations, but always we have recovered and regained our footing. Even now, as other realms still shrink in size, and their citizens languish without the benefits of a legitimate social contract, we in the Concordat expand. We are colonizing new worlds and new star systems where mankind—where humanity—has never before trod. Unlike others who turn their envious eyes filled with greed upon their neighbors, we look outwards, towards the future. It is the promise of that future that drives us forward and makes us far more than simply another Successor State.
And we protect what is ours. When studying the history of our realm, we must remember that one simple fact; what we have built is ours, no one else may lay claim, no one else has the right to take it away. In the words of the ancients, we hold these truths as self-evident; that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is our core. That is who we as a people are. And we shall defend our rights, no matter what the odds, no matter who the challenger. We must also remember that we respect those same rights of others. What our neighbor does, or does not do, is not of our concern. We afford him the same rights we expect in return. In nigh upon eight centuries of existence we have launched but a single ill-fated and badly thought-out war; a war that proved itself as a comedy of errors. Can our upright and virtuous neighbors claim as much? No. Throughout our history, we have asked others for one thing and one thing alone: the right to be left alone in peace, to enjoy the fruits of our own labors in our own homes. That, it would seem, has been far too much to ask.
Like all good tales, this one must of necessity begin at the beginning. And so we will examine our real history—unfettered by religious trappings of the order of ComStar, unhindered by the lies spewed by the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere. We will peel back the curtain of time and seek to understand why our freedom and independence and liberty are so vexing to our neighbors. To do that, we must start in the depths of the abyss of history, back to the days before interstellar space-flight on Old Earth itself. A wounded world; scarred and battered by far too many people raping its resources and abusing the planet itself with chemical discharges into its atmosphere and water. A world where the promise of freedom and liberty—so briefly attained by a few in the West for a short, golden time—had withered away and died beneath a bureaucratic nightmare that engorged itself upon the property and wealth of billions.
It is difficult to imagine such a circumstance in this day and time. All of the masses of humanity, huddled together upon but a single world—just one asteroid strike or nuclear exchange away from annihilation. But it was that overtaxed, overburdened world of injustice that discovered the concepts behind the Kearny-Fuchida drive and opened the door for what we term the First Exodus. That gave humanity the stars themselves. This is where our history begins, shortly after that first great seminal migration of our people from the small green planet that gave us birth.
When we reached the stars, we soon found that we had not left the bureaucrats behind. Like all bad governments are wont to do, they sought to follow us and take from us the product of our labors; all in the name of the common good, of course. But they did so without allowing our ancestors representation. And that proved to be the undoing of the Terran Alliance. Across known space, men and women revolted, sparking a fire that raged across the inhabited universe, demanding freedom and liberty. After attempting to put out the flames, to stomp out the cries for justice, the Alliance suffered its own change in government—and it went to the opposite extreme. A pox on all of you, it declared. Ignoring all worlds further than a single jump from Old Earth, they turned inward, and began to devour their own young.
That point was the true turning point of History. Like slaves who had successfully slaughtered their masters, we found no sudden sense of propriety and idealism in the aftermath of the Outer Reaches Revolt. There was no sudden cessation of violence as we turned our spirits toward improving our selves and our worlds. There was no harmony among the different cultures of humanity who suddenly discovered that life is not fair, and food does not magically appear when you hunger. Fear, apprehension, doubt; all that and more built upon itself until the Reaches once again erupted in war. Planets without enough sought to obtain what they needed; and since the Alliance no longer provided it, they took it from their neighbors. In place of the men and women who should have learned from the lessons of the Alliance there were only strong-men and warlords. Few worlds could claim any peace during this time and history tells us that more men and women died in these years than any other two decades since we first began to walk upright.
On the little known world Aix-la-Chapelle, this constant internecine fighting had a tragic ending. A woman had lost her husband and daughters years before to an Alliance firing squad before the stormtroopers departed forever. Picking up the pieces of her life, she tried to rebuild, using the fortune her family had amassed. Yet, they would not leave her and her people in peace. Her ships were hounded, pursued, and destroyed by pirates operating under the banner of various petty warlords and greed-stricken men. Day by day, she watched as her coffers were drained and her people—her people—were killed. And for what? Political power? The control of her world? A financial profit?
She did the only thing which the woman that she was would allow her to do. She took control of her own fate—and the fate of those who believed in her. Dissolving her remaining fortune, she announced the formation of an expedition to beyond the rim of human space. She announced that she intended to leave the violence far behind and colonize a world where men and women could live in peace. And her words attracted tens of thousands of adherents. Acquiring ships, she purchased heavy machinery and industrial equipment, she stockpiled food, water, and air; she acquired the weapons with which to defend herself and the people who would follow her. And in the winter of 2250, Samantha Calderon led her Fleet away from Aix-la-Chapelle and into history.
Chapter One: The Calderon Expedition
As with much else of our history, the story of Samantha Calderon’s epic expedition across nearly one thousand light-years has been distorted and fabricated in order to meet public expectations. A recent ComStar intelligence report on the state of the Periphery bluntly stated that the expedition consisted of 25 ships carrying a total of 2,300 colonists. This is abject nonsense. At the time of the Calderon expedition, not even the concept of the docking collar borne DropShip had been invented. JumpShips—as we today know them—did not exist.
Some Acolyte, buried in some holy sanctuary on Old Earth, rewrote history to attune it to modern sensibilities—when it is difficult to transport large numbers of individuals, thanks to the decline in technological levels since the end of the Star League. Many people alive today fail to even realize that anything other than the JumpShips and DropShips they are familiar with have ever been used. In reality, the Calderon Expedition consisted of forty-eight ships—not twenty-five—carrying 149,100 colonists and crew. Twenty-five ships—perhaps the source of the ComStar scribes confusion—were Aquilia class Colonial Transports, each one capable of transporting up to 5,700 men, women, and children. Another twenty were Corona class bulk freighters, while the remaining three were Discovery class Scout Survey Vessels.
Many in the Inner Sphere—and among the ranks of ComStar—will scoff at these numbers, but consider the following: by 2330, the people of this expedition had expanded—without outside assistance—to having six colonized worlds and a population of 4.5 million. That is seventy-seven years to expand to this level, and these are numbers that ComStar reported accurately, as confirmed by historical census archives on Taurus. With a population of just 2,300—assuming that none of the original colonists died, which would be a false assumption—then each man and woman would have had to generate 2,000 progeny in the next eight decades in order to meet those numbers. That is 4,000 per pair of colonists—male and female. That type of population explosion—in such a limited amount of time—does not occur naturally among the species homo sapiens.
However, taking the numbers given above, each of the original 149,000 or so colonists would have had to generate but 30 progeny across eight decades. That is still quite a large number, but frontier worlds tend to favor large families—and it is within the realm of human possibility. An additional argument can be made in how the founders of the Concordat retained their industrial capability—and their knowledge base. Such things are very difficult for small colonial groups to do when even a single death may destroy irreplaceable knowledge; when one fire might destroy the only database.
With a large and robust colonial expedition, the odds of that happening are lowered. Regardless of the attitudes of ComStar and the Inner Sphere, the numbers given above are accurate—as per the original forty-eight ship’s manifests stored in the Samantha Calderon Memorial Library in Samantha City on Taurus.
When Calderon and her Fleet departed Aix-la-Chapelle in the winter of 2250, she originally intended to set course towards the closest edge of human space, a move that would have taken her to the opposite side of the Periphery than where she eventually wound up. Events early on the voyage convinced her to alter her course.
Soon after the voyage began, the Fleet was hailed by several merchant ships whose captains were known to the Lady Samantha. These vessels—free traders, all—informed her of a vicious war ahead of her current course, between several of the small dominions that would in time become the Tamar Pact and the Rasalhague Republic. Furthermore, privateers from the Association of Galedon and several mercantile concerns in what would become the Donegal Pact were operating in the region, sowing yet more chaos in a region infested with it.
Conferring with her ship captains, Lady Samantha was impressed with Victor Taurens blunt statements that hope was not dead. If these vultures are blocking our path, then we go elsewhere, he is said to have said. Samantha Calderon agreed—and when other captains questioned her as to where, she replied to the ends of the universe if need be. The fleet changed course and made its way across warring fiefdoms and small alliances until it entered the Robinson system in the spring of 2251.
Trevor Howard was the current Dictator of Robinson at the time the Calderon Expedition arrived. Seeing the host of ships before him—and smitten by the woman leading the Fleet—he made the decision to seize her ships and force the colony to join the population of Robinson. Entertaining the Lady Samantha aboard his yacht, he apologized to her, and then ordered her to surrender her Fleet. Samantha Calderon smiled at Dictator Howard and took his microphone to transmit the surrender orders.
Instead she ordered the Fleet to destroy the yacht and all aboard if she was not freed in fifteen minutes. Howard ranted and raved about the perfidity of women, but his crew freed her before the fifteen minutes had expired—only to discover that a hand-picked team of security personnel from the Aquilia class transport Cygnus were preparing to board and take her back by force. The nascent Marines were led by their ship captain, thirty-two year old Victor Taurens.
Forcing Dictator Howard and his crew into their escape pods, Taurens launched them into space and ordered his ship to destroy the yacht—as a message to anyone who dares take a member of this expedition hostage, he then broadcast. The Robinson Space Patrol was given coordinates where they could retrieve their wayward dictator. Completing their resupply without further incident, the Expedition continued onward.
After wandering for almost fourteen months, the ships arrived on the spinward rim of known space, at the world of New Syrtis. On the long voyage, Samantha Calderon had fallen in love with Captain Taurens, and on New Syrtis the two were wed. For six weeks, the Expedition rested at New Syrtis, enjoying the company of people that they did not know quite so intimately. But, in late June of 2252, the Fleet set sail once more, this time jumping beyond the furthest settlement of humanity into the great black void.
Four weeks later, Samantha Calderon addressed the men and women of her Fleet. It was at this time that she finally told them of their destination—the Hyades Nebula, nearly 400 light-years past New Syrtis. It would take a further eighteen jumps to arrive at that destination with their primitive drives—but she assured the colonists that in the depths of the Nebula they would find shelter and safety.
Eight months later, as they approached the nebula, Samantha Calderon gave birth to her first son, Timothy Calderon. She and Victor spent a month enjoying life before they arrived at the Nebula that would soon earn the name of Hell’s Heart.
The Discovery class scouts had traveled ahead, and after spending two months studying the roiling red cloud of gasses had finally detected one usable jump point within. One of the scientists assigned to the survey vessels theorized that at such a stable point, a debris field could conceivably form—which would explain why no previous survey ship had ever returned.
But all previous ships had been unarmed and only lightly armored. Taking command of the Star Runner, Victor Taurens made the first jump, plotted by the finest navigator in the Fleet—Henry Flannagan. Two weeks later, the Star Runner jumped back to join the Fleet. Though she was battered and buffeted by the cloud of asteroids at the jump point, Captain Taurens had used her weaponry to clear enough of a zone to chance taking the Fleet through.
Transferring back to his ship—the Cygnus—he and Samantha parted. Records indicate she was furious with him ordering her—and the child—off of his vessel, but Taurens planned for his ship to be first one through. Samantha and the baby would be safer on a following ship. The Fleet jumped into the center of Hell’s Heart, and for two weeks fought off rogue asteroids suddenly appearing from the midst of the curtain walls of hellishly red and orange gas. During that time, Cygnus was destroyed with all hands when her power failed and she was struck directly amidships by an asteroid. Two other ships—one additional Aquilia class transport and one Corona class freighter—were also destroyed. Victor Taurens died aboard his flagship.
Less than sixteen hours after the death of Calderon’s second husband, the Fleet jumped into the clear and open space of the zenith jump-point of a G class star floating in a vast open cavity surrounded by the Nebula. For seventeen days, the Expedition waited in orbit as the scientists aboard the three Survey Ships took samples, but finally, they pronounced it eminently capable of supporting human life.
On January 23, 2253, Samantha Calderon set foot on the soil of her new home. Speaking to all of the surviving men and women who had accompanied her on the twenty-two month long voyage, she named their new world Taurus after her fallen husband. Less than six weeks later, the majority of the supplies and equipment had been landed, and the first crops sown. Landing City—which would eventually be renamed Samantha City—was founded and the colonists elected Samantha Calderon as their leader in a landslide.
While the original settlement on Taurus was being founded, Patrick Flannagan took command of the three survey ships and began a sixteen year project to survey the entire nebula from within. Six systems were found to possess worlds amicable to human life—four of those, including the star Taurus orbited, had TWO worlds with acceptable atmospheres, pressures, and free-standing water. These systems were surrounded by scores more—all filled with asteroids and debris, and resources unimagined elsewhere. The worlds of the Hyades had proven to be rich and bountiful, and the colony flourished.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2009, 10:43:11 AM by master arminas » Report to moderator 131.95.113.77 (?)
master arminas
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2009, 09:37:03 AM »
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This is something I have been working on for a while. Let me know what you think--if you want to use any of it, feel free to. I hope to keep adding chapters and expanding the early history of the Concordat. As always, let me know what you think!
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2009, 10:15:38 AM »
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A very enjoyable read! Logical and well-thought out, as usual. Wink Thanks for sharing.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2009, 11:20:26 AM »
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This is excellent-I really like it - the only thing I question is about Timothy Calderon being the son of Victor Taurens- IIRC in periphery 1e it implies Samantha had a son from her first marriage who survived and went on the Calderon Expedition with her- I will check on this tonight.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2009, 11:32:19 AM »
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I thought her only two kids by the 1st marriage were daughters--both of whom were killed by an Alliance firing squad on ALC, along with Sam's first husband--whose name we are never given. Am I wrong? If I am NOT, then it brings up problem #2; when Sam dies in 2268, that would make Tim just 16 years old. I must be wrong, right?
AtV, GMotER
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2009, 11:41:31 AM »
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Quote from: master arminas on June 18, 2009, 11:32:19 AM
I thought her only two kids by the 1st marriage were daughters--both of whom were killed by an Alliance firing squad on ALC, along with Sam's first husband--whose name we are never given. Am I wrong? If I am NOT, then it brings up problem #2; when Sam dies in 2268, that would make Tim just 16 years old. I must be wrong, right?
AtV, GMotER
I'm not at my books right now- when I get home I will check Periphery 1e and let you know what I find.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #6 on: June 18, 2009, 12:11:53 PM »
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Oh no, the Bulls are starting to run! Shocked Yikes we get Master Arminas and Irose started on the BTSD Concordat we Terrans might lose are central place in the story line. Angry
Seriously some great stuff!
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2009, 02:22:14 PM »
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Maybe Takiro but its a good read.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2009, 04:39:54 PM »
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I re-read the Periphery book and it's not clear if Timothy is the son of Samantha Calderon's first husband or Victor Taurens. It refers to her husband and 2 daughters being shot by the Alliance and that Timothy is her only son. There is nothing that prevents Timothy from being from her first marriage but also nothing that specifically says he is.
As for his age- he died in 2330- so if he was born in 2252 he would have been 78 at the time of his death- which is reasonable, if Timothy was from her first marriage he would have been born no later then 2237 so he would be at least 93, and probably much older, when he died, which while not impossible, seems unlikely given what would probably be a fairly primative medical capability in the new nation.
As for him being coming protector at 16, it seems unlikely but you can play it by going with the bit about how Timothy set up an egalitarian nation and his election at a young age is part of that.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2009, 11:48:21 PM »
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So is this supposed to be some sort of radical revisionist history of the Concordat? I wonder what Comstar's historians would have to say about the claims that their research is biased and flawed. Cheesy
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #10 on: June 19, 2009, 05:52:13 AM »
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Quote from: FirstStarLord on June 18, 2009, 11:48:21 PM
So is this supposed to be some sort of radical revisionist history of the Concordat? I wonder what Comstar's historians would have to say about the claims that their research is biased and flawed. Cheesy
If it works for the canon setting why should it be any problem for us?Huh
From the new periphery handbook:
I will say this: having read previous ComStar compilations on the Periphery, you’re better off trusting what’s between these covers. Not that the earlier works are completely wrong—but they’ve got some real howlers, and the authors didn’t always do their homework terribly well. (p. 11)
We get a similar sentiment in TR3075 and I believe in TR3039.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #11 on: June 19, 2009, 10:01:47 PM »
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Cool- I like this!
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #12 on: June 23, 2009, 09:21:02 AM »
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Chapter Two: The Lady and Her Son
Taurus proved to be a world virtually tailor-made for mankind. Ninety-eight point four percent the size of Earth, its greater density resulted in a gravity of 1.004—almost identical to the homeworld. Circling a G3 star—hotter and brighter than our original Sun—in the fourth orbital shell, Taurus consisted of roughly 71.3% water (both fresh and salt) and 28.7% land, with an axial tilt of 21 degrees. A single large moon orbited Taurus, giving the oceans and inland seas tides, and casting aside the dark nights with its silvery glow. Eight continents divided the waters, and like Mother Terra, all were filled with life. A single revolution of Taurus about its star took 25 standard months, giving the world lazy and long seasons, but the planet itself rotated on its own axis once every 26 hours. Being farther away from its primary than Earth, Taurus was cooler, but both poles were covered with water instead of land, allowing the seas to circulate warmth and moderating the temperature to near-Terran norms. While the polar seas were ice-covered, the majority of the continental formations were mostly free of glaciation, except on the highest elevations and mountain peaks.
Primeval forests and jungles and plains and savannahs covered the world Samantha Calderon had led her expedition to, along with a thriving local fauna of small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and scores of other forms of life. No large land animals had yet evolved—none capable of directly challenging a human being, at least—but the fossil record would reveal that many such had existed just a few hundred thousand years earlier. The expedition had arrived after an impact event destroyed much of the surface life of Taurus—similar to the event that wiped out Terra’s dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. While the flora had recovered, animal life—except in the seas—had yet to re-evolve into large herbivores and predators. The few forms of native ground life found seldom exceeded twenty or thirty kilos in mass, and for a specimen to mass even that much was relatively uncommon.
Teams of specialists from the scout-survey vessels selected one of the northern continents as the most promising for initial settlement. Dozens of small craft poured across Alpha Continent for days, mapping the ground, but finally the landing spot was chosen. On the flanks of a range of low mountains east of a broad, deep ocean, a wide valley filled with an immense fresh water lake was discovered. Fed by glacial streams, the lake teemed with local life—and the survey teams found the soil rich and fertile. When Samantha Calderon set foot on the site, she would found the capital of Landing City.
Despite the idyllic setting, those first years were ones of hardship for the colonists. Doctors and physicians struggled to deal with native diseases, while colonists toiled to clear the soil and sow crops, to lay the bricks of their new homes. Unknown dangers sprang up—and the children of the Earth were once again taught the lesson that even small and innocuous creatures can be lethal. By the time the first local winter approached fourteen months later, almost six thousand of the colonists had perished. But the survivors flourished. Within three years, the population had doubled in size and the construction of Landing was complete. The streets may have still been dirt and gravel, but the first fusion generator was operational, and every home in the colony now had power and heat. Terran crops had adapted well to their new world, and domesticated animals painstakingly cared for during the journey had adjusted. Men and women now spread out across the forests, mountains, hills, and valleys of Alpha. Dozen of new small townships were founded, including several that took advantage of natural harbors on the coast of the Azure Sea. A thriving fishing industry began to take shape, supplementing the meat and grains raised by farms in the interior.
By 2260, the population included the survivors of the expedition—now reduced to a strength of around 120,000—and nearly 400,000 children ranging from the newborn to pre-teens. Recognizing the need for some form of planetary government, the colonists enacted the Planetary Assembly with delegates from each township and Landing City. That first decade was one of wonder as the First Colonists explored their world and worked themselves to the bone building a future for their children. Yet, it almost fell apart shortly thereafter.
Despite her wealth, Samantha Calderon had not been able to finance the expedition by herself. Dozens of others had contributed—in exchange for immense sections of land once a habitable world had been found and colonized. The twenty-seven Landed Families each held grants encompassing thousands of square miles of virgin territory; and as always in our history, with power and riches comes corruption. The towns at the heart of each of these Land-Holds attracted many of the original colonists; and they began to farm and mine and build, as the Twenty-Seven doled out precious equipment in exchange for a portion of the fruits of their labor.
Soon enough, the Twenty-Seven made themselves into neo-feudal lords, forcing the men and women who lived on their lands into perpetual servitude. It sickened the Lady Samantha as she watched, but the government of Taurus offered little recourse to her—and to the colonists. As the Twenty-Seven waxed fatter and fatter from the labor of others, her measures put forward in the Assembly to abate the travesty were quashed time and again, as the delegates from the Twenty-Seven Land-Holds outvoted her and her followers.
Finally, in 2264, Samantha had suffered long enough in silence. She began to travel between the Free Towns and the Land-Holds and addressed the colonists and their children. She reminded them that the laws the Twenty-Seven had enacted held only on their own land-holds, and she called on the people who were suffering to leave for the Free Towns and for Landing City. She arranged transport for those brave enough to leave, and she debated the scions of the so-called Lords in the Assembly Hall.
For four years, Samantha would criss-cross the continent to plead with the Twenty-Seven to halt their actions—supported by just a handful of leaders from the original expedition. Patrick Flannagan and Henri Montour; Robert St. John and Heather Scott; Ian MacLeod and Olivia Santiago; Thomas Kincaid and Leslie Ann Styles; Frank Norman and Geraldine Richter; Althea O’Connor and Erik Braddock. These were the Twelve loyalists who followed Samantha.
Her voice had given rise to a great anger among the Twenty-Seven, however, and finally someone acted on that anger. On March 14, 2268, Samantha Calderon died in a crash as she flew back to Landing City from one of her trips to the Land-Holds. She had celebrated her 57th birthday just three days earlier. Investigators—led by Patrick Flannagan and Ian McLeod—found no sign that her aircar had been sabotaged; but the people of Taurus knew the truth. As the colony went into mourning for the death of the woman who had led them to their new home, representatives of the Twenty-Seven attempted to ram measures through the Assembly to codify the status of the people dwelling on their Land-Holds. Those measures would have turned those men and women and children into little more than serfs and slaves. Debate came to half, however, when Henri Montour reminded the Assembly that they lacked one seat—that which had been Samantha’s. The measures were delayed until after the election of a new delegate.
Into the picture stepped a man that would become known as the Father of the Concordat—Timothy Calderon. At just sixteen standard years, the youth had inherited the fire and principles of his mother, combined with the integrity and courage of Victor Taurens. Educated at his mother’s knee, Timothy was regarded as many as a child prodigy. Though he lacked a formal degree, he debated astrophysics with Flannagan, botany with O’Connor, philosophy with Santiago, and political science with his mother.
He was a young man who had absorbed all that others poured into him, and forged it into something far more than the mere sum of its parts. As the Twenty-Seven celebrated their moment of ascension to power, Timothy announced that he would seek the Assembly seat held previously by his mother. No law restricted the age of those who could become delegate to the Council he stated—and it was time for the new generation to begin taking upon themselves their fair share of the labors of the colony.
The Lords and Ladies of the Twenty-Seven waved his victory a month later off as residual sentiment for his mother. But then, Timothy—as was his right as a delegate—called for a census and new elections. The demographic tide had shifted against the Twenty-Seven as their Land-Holds lost people over the last eight years—and now the Free Towns and Landing City—controlled by the Loyal Twelve—could match the Lords vote for vote.
The new Assembly was almost evenly split when it assembled, and yet the delegates—by a margin of one vote—elected as Speaker young Timothy Calderon. For two years, Timothy begged and pleaded with the Twenty-Seven to turn aside from their path, but all for naught. The Old Families of the Land-Holds forced their people to remain on their lands, and armed their retainers with hunting rifles. In July of 2270, they declared themselves free and independent of the Assembly of Taurus, sovereign states in their own right.
Speaking from the podium of the Assembly Chamber, Timothy Calderon acknowledged their secession and bade farewell to their delegates. It was an eerily shrunken and silent chamber that awaited him to speak again. For twenty-eight days, Taurus held its breath as Timothy Calderon apparently did nothing. But records from our archives show that he was completing steps to deal once and for all with the Twenty-Seven and their misdeeds. Eighteen years earlier, Samantha Calderon had left the contents of one cargo hold, aboard one ship untouched. That ship remained in orbit ever since—as did the other forty-four survivors. Their skeleton crews manned weapons stations watching for any stray rocks that might enter the atmosphere, in order to destroy them before impact.
But over the past two years, Timothy had secretly—with the aid and assistance of the Twelve—arranged for young men and women of his generation to be added to the ship crews. Several hundred had been aloft, and while they were there, they had trained in the use of the military weapons and armor Samantha had hid from the rest of the Colony. They learned tactics and operations from the surviving security personnel of the original expedition—and they made plans.
On September 3rd, 2270, twenty-seven strike teams of the suddenly revealed Taurian Guards attacked the capital of each of the Land-Holds simultaneously. Using non-lethal means wherever possible, they managed to capture or kill every member of the Twenty-Seven families—and their most loyal retainers—at the cost of just seven dead Guardsmen and twenty-three wounded.
Addressing the people of Taurus four days later, Timothy declared the Assembly disbanded. He read to the citizens of his new world a document he entitled the Concord of Taurus; it was this document that would establish him as Protector of Taurus—later amended to Protector of the Taurian Homeworlds. The Concord outlined the new government and its powers—and its limitations. In a fiery speech, the young Protector announced the adoption of egalitarian principles that would continue to shape us to this very day—eight centuries later.
No work—no food. The Concord was blunt and simple in its terms and made clear in ways that few others in the history of man had accomplished that each individual citizen was free and independent. Civil liberties were enshrined in the Concord—the right of assembly, the right of speech, the right of a free and open press, the right to bear arms. He spoke for two hours giving the people of Taurus his vision of the future.
And then he simply told them—you decide. Will it be business as usual; politics as usual? Will it be a world formed in the fashion of the hated Alliance or can we dare to try something new?
Elections were set for one month later with but a single choice on the ballot: Yes or No. Yes would result in the adoption of the Concord and the elevation of the Calderon line as the hereditary Protectors of Taurus. No would see a return to the Assembly—and a trial for Timothy Calderon under the Assembly’s laws for his actions.
Ninety-nine percent of the citizens aged twelve and over voted in that election. Ninety-seven percent of those chose to follow a Calderon once again. Four days after the election, Timothy was anointed as the Second Protector of Taurus by Father Jack Sinclair. When asked afterwards why he was proclaimed as the Second Protector, Timothy replied that his mother was—and always had been—the Protector that everyone on the planet had truly deserved. While she never held the title in life, Samantha Calderon has been ever since acknowledged as the First Protector of Taurus, and of the Taurian Homeworlds, and of the Taurian Concordat.
The Twenty-Seven were stripped of all wealth and given a chance to swear their fealty to the Concord of Taurus—not to Timothy himself. Most decided to do so. Those were did not were taken to the Zeta Continent—uninhabited at that time—and given a rifle, sixty bullets, and a knife; and then left there alone—separated by hundreds of miles from any other of the criminals.
Over the next forty years, Protector Timothy ably led his people, expanding to colonize all eight of the continents of Taurus. Industries were constructed—but his strict environmental laws prohibited the destruction of the environment. Substantial sections of the planet were declared natural preserves where human inhabitation was forbidden.
Finally, in 2308, Timothy Calderon asked for volunteers to begin settling the other worlds of the Hyades Cluster. In 2310, Megaris was founded, followed by Samantha in 2312, Parian in 2316, Menion in 2317, Ishtar in 2320, Ina in 2322, Jamestown in 2324, New Columbia in 2327, and Aurora in 2330. The discovery of rich germanium deposits on New Columbia in 2329 spurred efforts to begin building ship-yards capable of constructing new FTL vessels, though Timothy would not live to see their completion.
After a five-year bout with cancer, Timothy Calderon died in the Hall of the Protector in Samantha City on 17 December, 2330 at the age of 78, attended by his wife Sarah, three daughters, two sons, seventeen grand-children, and twenty-three great-grandchildren. He is to this day remembered as the man who forged our soul. He bequeathed to his daughter Sandra—the Third Protector—ten inhabited worlds with a population of more than four and a half million citizens.
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #13 on: June 23, 2009, 03:38:14 PM »
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Looking forward to more! Wink
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Re: The True History of the Taurian Concordat
« Reply #14 on: June 23, 2009, 03:40:26 PM »
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Its way better than the official version.
Looking forward to more soon.
