Aurigan Coalition (DDAU)

The Aurigan Coalition is a minor interstellar state situated in a region of the Rimward Periphery known as the Aurigan Reach, bordered to Coreward by the Capellan Confederation, to Spinward by the Taurian Concordat, and sharing a frontier along its Anti-Spinward border with the Magistracy of Canopus. While in many respects very close to the canonical version of the Coalition, the Dust Devils AU adjusts some details and expands on the Coalition's history into the late 31st century. 
== History ==
=== Formation ===
The Coalition has its origins in a trade and anti-piracy agreement between the abandoned colony systems of Coromodir, Guldra, Itrom, and Tyrlon in the wake of the First Star League's collapse. Originally meant to enable the worlds' survival until order returned to the Human Sphere, by the time of the Third Succession War it became clear that the worlds of the Aurigan Trade Pact were on their own for the foreseeable future, and thus the seven most powerful merchant houses of the expanded Pact decided to form a sovereign interstellar nation. The wealthiest and most powerful among them, House Arano, took on the mantle of leadership of the new Coalition, and Keona Arano became the first High Lady of the new Aurigan Coalition, with a Council of Electors made up of the other four Founding House families to serve as a legislative and advisory body, as well as the voting body which selected the next High Lord or Lady upon the ruler's death or abdication.
=== Expansion & Decline ===
The wealthy and technologically-advanced industrial world of Mechdur was the first world to join the Coalition after its initial creation, seeing great value in a partnership with the resource-rich Founding Worlds and their trade fleets, not to mention new markets free from the strangling tariffs imposed by the Successor States to fuel their constant warfare. The Coalition, for its part, gained a valuable manufacturing center, including a mothballed BattleMech factory which had survived the worst depredations of the previous centuries due to its obscurity. Quietly bringing the Mechdur BattleMech facilities back online, the Founding Houses began to expand their military and became more effective at combating the piracy endemic to the region. Fewer losses suffered meant better revenues, which improved the quality of life throughout the Coalition's worlds, encouraging more abandoned former colony systems to petition for membership. 
Unfortunately, this expansion was not without its cost; many of the abandoned colony worlds were marginal at best, and with membership in the Coalition began to petition for assistance in restoring and repairing their crumbled infrastructures. As the number of systems in the Coalition's fold increased, so too did the size of the Council of Electors, as each new territory was allowed a seat, and the increased size of the bureaucracy naturally led to decreases in efficiency. Additionally, the continued breakdown of the Inner Sphere as a whole led to a number of refugee crises, not to mention a further increases in pirate activity as disgraced and outlaw military units fled justice and destruction in the Successor States with better equipment than the local banditry had boasted in the past. 
Any one of these issues individually would, most likely, have been well within the capacity of the Coalition to deal with and prosper, but taken together, the strain was beginning to show. Resource and financial shortages were increasingly common, the general degradation to quality of life throughout the Human Sphere that the Coalition had been created to fend off crept in from the edges, and the bright optimism of the Coalition's people began to falter. Things came to a head, finally, when the Coalition's expansion drew the attention of not just neglected colonies looking for protection and prosperity, but of those who had abandoned them in the first place.
=== Border Tensions ===
When the Taurian colony worlds of Aea, Regis Roost, Qalzi, and Katinka opened annexation negotiations with the Coalition in early 3039, the increasingly paranoid Protector Thomas Calderon's Concordat finally took notice of the expanding state on their border. Though the four worlds considered themselves independent after more than 50 years of neglect and inattention on behalf of the Taurians, Protector Calderon disagreed with this assessment, viewing these systems as property of the Concordat. As tensions escalated, High Lord Tamati Arano II sought to negotiate with the Protector, but unfortunately, a combination of Calderon's inherent combativeness and paranoia, the increasingly inefficient bureaucracy of the Coalition's Council of Electors, and High Lord Arano's weakness as a leader led such talks to stall with no real progress. 
As the waning months of 3039 saw the Council in deadlock with their High Lord, and whispers of a Taurian military buildup in systems near the disputed worlds, Santiago Espinosa, High Lord Arano's brother-in-law1 and most trusted advisor, began to fear for the future of the Coalition. Seeing the success of neighboring autocracies and their capability for swift, decisive action, Espinosa became convinced that the Coalition must adopt a similar system of governance to maintain its sovereignty, and began to agitate for High Lord Arano to dissolve the Council and take more direct control over their nation. Though the High Lord initially demurred, it has been speculated that given more time, the influence Espinosa already wielded over the ruler may have eventually seen Arano agree to his plans. Fate, however, rendered such conjecture purely academic, as before Espinosa could completely sway the High Lord, Arano and his wife were killed in a JumpShip accident, thought to be a direct result of the Coalition's general decline and the increasing age of its infrastructure.
=== Rise of the Directorate ===
In the wake of High Lord Tamati's death, the Council of Electors met and, as was tradition and mostly formality, cast their votes to confirm Tamati's heir, Kamea, as the new High Lady of the Coalition. Lord Espinosa, however, upon discovering his niece to be of firmer will than her father, and in total disagreement with his aim at converting the Coalition to autocratic rule, made the fateful decision that another Arano would not sit on the Cormorant Throne. Espinosa, having invested significantly in a quiet buildup of his own House Milita, launched a sudden, violent coup upon the very day of Kamea's coronation in the spring of 3040, overthrowing the Coalition's government in favor of a new Aurigan Directorate, with himself at its head. 
With Kamea apparently killed while attempting to escape, and the heads of the other Founding Houses either in support of or outgunned by the new regime, there was little resistance as the newly enthroned Director Espinosa began to reshape the Directorate to his will, dissolving the Council of Electors and subsuming the individual Founding House Militias into his own forces. Espinosa also opened unilateral secret talks with the Concordat, and while it isn't certain what terms were agreed to, the next three years would see a general decrease in tensions along the Taurian border as the Directorate turned its attention inward to cement its hold on the peoples of the Aurigan Reach. To Espinosa's mind, he had a limited amount of time to strengthen the Directorate before some external threat would come to crush it, and such a timetable required ruthless, direct action. If some had to suffer for the good of the whole, he reasoned, then so be it, the ends would justify the means.
=== Arano Restoration ===
Kamea Arano, however, was not in fact killed during the coup, and after three years in hiding would return to the Aurigan Reach at the head of a small loyalist force, intent on retaking her throne. With clandestine financial and materiel support from the Magistracy of Canopus, Kamea was able to outfit her forces with BattleMechs and acquire the services of a lance-strength mercenary force that would come to be known as the Dust Devils. After a brief period of preparation and the buildup of her forces, Arano launched her Restoration with an assault on the border system of Weldry.
The Restoration's rapid liberation of Weldry took the Directorate by surprise, and the revelation of atrocities performed by Directorate security forces at the so-called "Ice Box" prison on that cold, inhospitable world caused a large erosion in the regime's support base. As two more systems immediately rebelled and pledged themselves to Lady Arano's cause, Director Espinosa quickly realized that the threat posed by this uprising was significant. A drastic course was decided upon, and Espinosa dispatched his daughter, Victoria, to conduct a false-flag terrorist attack on the Taurian world of Perdition. With thousands dead in the chemical weapon attack, and planted evidence pointing toward the Concordat's hated Davion enemies, Espinosa was able to play on Director Calderon's paranoia to position himself as a natural ally and useful buffer against potential aggression from the Federated Commonwealth, so long as he was able to survive his niece's "misguided" rebellion. Calderon agreed, and began to clandestinely provide arms and equipment to the Directorate.
While at first, the Restoration continued to make gains against the Directorate, liberating a number of systems including Panzyr, Mechdur, and Smithon, disaster would strike when Lady Arano's mercenaries destroyed a DropShip that was, unbeknownst to them, a Taurian vessel. In the aftermath, the Taurian Concordat entered the war directly, bolstering the Directorate with overwhelming military forces and putting the Arano loyalists on the defensive. 
After a number of reversals and losses, however, Lord Alexander Madeira, Kamea Arano's chief advisor and friend, managed to recover evidence linking Director Espinosa and his daughter to the Perdition Massacre with aid from the Magistracy Information Ministry, which the Restoration promptly transmitted to the Concordat. After reviewing and verifying the information, the Taurians withdrew all support from the Directorate and declared Espinosa a wanted man. As the Taurians withdrew (with the exception of rogue elements, led by TDF Commodore Samuel Ostergaard), the Restoration was able to regain the initiative, and one by one the Directorate's remaining systems were liberated.
Kamea Arano's forces landed on Coromodir VI in late 3045, bringing the Directorate to an end with the death of Victoria Espinosa and Samuel Ostergaard and the surrender of Santiago Espinosa. The Restoration decided to hand over Espinosa to Protector Calderon to face trial and execution in the Taurian Concordat, a politically expedient move that simultaneously helped to heal the rift within the Reach, and improve relations with the Concordat. Arano took the Cormorant Throne and began the process of rebuilding her shattered nation.
=== Reconstruction ===
While the forces of the Restoration attempted to minimize collateral damage to infrastructure and the populace during the civil war, the Taurians and the Directorate had no such reservations, to the point where many of the actions undertaken by Ostergaard's troops would most likely be considered war crimes under the Aries Conventions (though as the Concordat was never a signatory to the Conventions, there was no legal precedent to pressure them for reparations, even without factoring Ostergaard's official "rogue" status). As such, the reformed Coalition found itself on the brink of total collapse due to the level and extent of devastation left behind in the conflict's wake. Her military depleted and badly under-equipped, the economies of many of her most important worlds in shambles, and much of her throneworld facing an ecological crisis due to the high-velocity impact of the downed Fortress-class DropShip TCS Iberia, High Lady Arano would soon discover that tearing down her uncle's regime was to be far easier than building her own.
Somewhat ironically, considering her uncle's root justification for his coup, High Lady Arano found that in the crisis that faced her nation direct and decisive action was more effective than debate and committee. As such, the High Lady did not immediately move to declare planetary elections to reconvene the Council, nor did she remand centralized control of the Coalition's military forces to Founding House militias, as was tradition. While some began to have misgivings and feared they had overturned one tyrant for another, those who kept faith in Arano would point out that three of the seven Founding Houses with permanent Council seats were in ruin, and the Coalition was in no shape to guarantee safe, fair, and transparent elections at the planetary level in crisis. For her part, the High Lady simply politely but firmly dismissed all concerns, and focused her energies on two key priorities: feeding her people, and keeping them safe.
Feeding the people turned out not to be a problem of supply, but of logistics. The Aurigan Reach's primary industry had always been, and still was, agriculture, and the infrastructure for producing food on the Coalition's bread-basket worlds remained largely intact even through the conflict. The difficulty, then, was getting the food from the fields to the tables where it was needed most, particularly the famine-stricken populations of Panzyr, Fjaldr, and Smithon, who had suffered much from the atrocities of Espinosa and Ostergaard and had lost access to Restoration relief shipments in favor of troop transportation in the later part of the civil war. The Coalition saw initial success in the first few months after the cessation of conflict in reassigning shipping volume to relief efforts, but the easing of one crisis led to the exacerbation of another concern: defense. 
It is ever the nature of predators to seek the most vulnerable prey, and so it was in the Reach. As more and more transport capacity was given over to humanitarian relief, piracy began to flourish once again in the Coalition, particularly by raiding groups with access to BattleMechs. Whether these bandit groups were made up of those remnants of the Directorate's forces that the Coalition had yet to deal with, or outsiders who began coming to the Reach in greater numbers as word of the destructive scale of the civil war and the depleted military of the Coalition spread across the Rimward Periphery and beyond, it was quickly clear that these marauders represented an existential threat to the future of the fragile state. However, with so much of what resources the Coalition could muster dedicated to civic reconstruction, there was little funding available for replacing the losses suffered in the conflict, much less expanding to meet increasing threats. Even had such moneys existed, the manufacturing capacity did not; though Mechdur had managed to avoid the worst of the fighting, Directorate saboteurs had managed to do significant damage to the world's sole BattleMech factory prior to their withdrawal which would take significant time to bring back online. 
From High Lady Arano's perspective, however, this problem had a fairly straightforward solution: Her uncle had spent much of the wealth he had squeezed from the Aurigan people on military hardware, and it was time that the Aurigan people got what they paid for. An estimated one in eight of Espinosa's MechWarriors, fearing the wrath of the very populace they had abused and exploited for years, refused to surrender, and while a small number had simply fought to the death, most had gone on the run as pirates or mercenaries and taken their equipment with them. From the Coalition's point of view, these holdouts had absconded with state property, and the High Lady tasked Lord Madeira with creating a plan for getting that property back, in the hopes of both removing a number of bandits from the board while providing the requisite equipment to fend off the rest at the same time. A year after overthrow of the Directorate, Madeira and Arano put their plan into motion.
At first, the Directorate remnants were taken by surprise, but as the months went by and more and more of the holdouts were hunted down and captured or destroyed, word began to spread of House Arano's "Repo Men", as the troops the Coalition had tasked with hunting down the wayward "thieves" began to be called. Utilizing a number of smaller-scale mercenary commands and Royal Guard units, including the Dust Devils, the Antian Lanciarii, and Irukandji Company, among others, Lord Madeira would provide each hunting party with a list of Directorate materiel and the location of those who had "absconded" with it, and paid bounties based on the amount of it recovered and returned to the Coalition. The initiative, called Operation RESTORED HOPE, was a great success, and is credited with saving the Coalition from destruction by pirate depredation and the hungering eyes of more powerful neighbors as the Coalition became more difficult pickings.
Slowly but surely, through a combination of careful resource allocation, hard work, aggressive response to threats, and shrewd political maneuvering, Arano and Madeira pulled the Coalition back from the brink of destruction. High Lady Arano would wed Liliana Centrella2 in 3054 and deftly turned the already-joyous occasion to a political victory when she announced the full restoration of the Council of Electors and a detailed plan for a return of long-missed secure and free elections in 3055. The strengthened ties with the Magistracy of Canopus that resulted from the marriage (and the birth of their son and heir Nikau Arano-Centrella in 3057) positioned the Coalition well to benefit from the signing of the Trinity Alliance between the Magistracy, the Capellan Confederation, and the Taurian Concordat in 3058. With intact Recharge Stations in both Mechdur and Ryan's Fate, the Coalition was able to provide a secure and fast alternative trade route for the Trinity allies' use free from the risks (and costs) of attempting to route goods through the antagonistic Federated Commonwealth or the pirate-infested independent systems of the Periphery. Offering of favored-nation status to the Taurian Concordat's merchant shipping (and negotiations with the much more diplomatically-minded Jeffrey Calderon3) would also allow High Lady Arano to fulfill one of her late father's dreams when in 3060 the Concordat officially recognized the sovereign status of and signed a non-aggression pact with her nation. 
By 3062, most of the civil war's destruction was fading into memory, and the Coalition was enjoying a level of prosperity and peace it had not known since the early expansion years. With the increase in trade, the discovery and exploitation of new resources, and the recent addition of Rockwellan, Mandalas, Sacromonte, Appian, and finally Detroit to the Coalition, the Aurigans seem to have finally turned the corner.
== Politics ==
=== Governance ===
The Aurigan Coalition is a constitutional Monarchy, with the Coalition Charter serving as the principal governing document that divides power between the High Lord or Lady and the Council of Electors and establishes the rights and responsibilities of Coalition citizenry. 
==== High Lord of the Aurigan Coalition ====
The Coalition's head of state is elected by the Council of Electors for a life term, however, such elections have traditionally been more of a ceremonial formality than a true contest, as the Council generally4 votes unanimously for the new head of House Arano upon the death of the old. The High Lord enjoys sweeping executive powers over the defense of the realm, relations with foreign entities, enforcement of laws, appointment and management of the judiciary, and a vote within and veto power over legislation passed by the Council.
Traditionally, the defense of the Aurigan Coalition was a shared responsibility held by the militia forces of the Founding Houses; however, among the amendments ratified into the Charter when High Lady Kamea Arano reconvened the Council was the creation of a central Aurigan Coalition Military under the direct command of the High Lady herself, both to provide more effective defense from outside aggression and to prevent the rise of another Santiago Espinosa. 
==== The Council of Electors ====
The Council of Electors is responsible for drafting and voting upon legislation, approving the High Lord's judicial appointments, and allocation of funding and resources for civic and military projects. While the High Lord has veto power over any legislation passed by the Council, the Council retains the ability to override said veto with a two-thirds majority vote. To date, this power has never been successfully exercised. Additionally, a compromise reached with High Lady Arano in exchange for her amendment to the Charter that consolidated the Coalition's military allowed for the Council to include an additional amendment giving them legal authority to remove a sitting High Lord from office with a four-fifths majority vote and elect a replacement, as a check on potential abuses of power or lack of fitness in their head of state.
Initially, the Council was made up of the heads of the seven Founding Houses of the Coalition, each of which continue to maintain a permanent seat:
* House Arano of Coromodir
* House Espinosa of Coromodir
* House Madeira of Guldra
* House Decimis of Panzyr
* House Parata of Tyrlon
* House Karosas of Smithon
* House Gallas of Itrom
Over time, the council was expanded to a number include elected representatives from each of the Coalitions's member worlds based on the populations of those worlds. In its current iteration, the Council seats for Houses Espinosa and Karosas remain empty due to the death of all known members of said houses in the civil war. There have been talks of elevating minor Houses to take their places, but thus far, High Lady Arano has demurred from doing so.
=== Foreign Relations ===
==== The Magistracy of Canopus ====
The Aurigan Coalition is now tied to the Centrella family by marriage, and enjoys positive relations with the Magistracy. These relations have proven quite the boon to both parties, with the Magistracy benefiting from the rich agricultural and mineral output of the Reach worlds, while the Coalition has received a boost to its medical and scientific capabilities. Tensions that could have arisen from the recent incorporation into the Coalition of worlds on their common frontier seem to have been smoothed over by these marital ties as well.
==== The Taurian Concordat ====
Relations between the Concordat and Coalition could be best described as cordial, but cool. The "favored nation" status enjoyed by Concordat merchants in the Coalition has gone a long way to crossing the rift between the two nations; however, memories of Taurian support for the Directorate and the atrocities committed by Samuel Ostergaard's forces during the civil war are slow to fade, and on the Taurian side some resentment still lingers for the Coalition's past annexation of border worlds still viewed as sovereign Concordat soil, regardless of what the populations of said worlds may think.
==== The Capellan Confederation ====
The final member of the Trinity Alliance is viewed by the Coalition government as a neighbor with which they speak politely, but with one hand resting on a pistol's butt. Assurances from their friends in the Magistracy and the encouraging signs of social reforms brought about in the Confederation by the influence of Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao's Canopian wife aside, the Coalition's citizenry views the Capellans with a similar cool wariness extended to any Successor State due to the cost and pain inflicted on their worlds by first the Star League, then the fallout of the Succession Wars. There are indications, however, that relations may be warming, as evidenced by the Confederation's willingness to provide technical expertise to refurbish the ancient BattleMech factories on Detroit shortly after that world's annexation by the Coalition in exchange for raw materials and foodstuffs.
==== The Federated Suns ====
Couched as they are between two greater powers who view the Federated Suns through the lens of generational hatred and distrust, the Coalition judiciously avoids diplomatic relations of any kind with that nation, at least publicly, and to date the Suns' focus on the FedCom Civil War gives credence to a widely held belief that awareness of the Coalition is most-likely limited to a low-tier office of the Department of Military Intelligence.
==== ComStar/Word of Blake ====
The Coalition has seen no noticeable impact of the ComStar schism, as those members of the old Order assigned to the career-dead-end of the Coalition's few "backwater" Hyper-Pulse Generator posts tended to be more of an unorthodox and irreverent bent, making them a poor fit for Word of Blake fanaticism. As such, the Coalition's HPG network remains solidly in the hands of ComStar, and in fact the local membership seems to be happier under Primus Sharilar Mori's secular reforms. Despite (or perhaps because of) the Periphery's status as a sort of dumping ground for the Order's miscreants and problem children, ComStar's HPG staff has historically enjoyed overall less aloof and more cordial relations with the people of the Periphery in general and the Reach specifically than that of most Inner Sphere nations that play host to the organization.
=== Others ===
Generally speaking, the small size and remote position of the Coalition precludes them from any diplomatic relations with powers who do not share a border.
== Military ==
The Aurigan Coalition Defense Force has come a long way from its depleted and battered state at the end of the Restoration, though in raw numbers and strength would still be hard-pressed to match its larger, more powerful neighbors. With a frank understanding of their own resource limitations, the ACDF organizes its forces into five combined-arms regiments (publicly, at least; a sixth regiment exists but as of 3065 has remained an unfielded secret reserve) for maximum tactical flexibility at minimum cost. Each regiment consists of a battalion of three BattleMech companies, two battalions of mechanized infantry, a mixed battalion of combat vehicles and artillery, and an AeroSpace Fighter wing. The Coalition does not currently have the DropShip assets to form a dedicated navy, and instead such vessels as are available are attached as primarily transport assets under the command of each regiment. While each individual world is also permitted (and encouraged) to maintain their own local volunteer militia, such forces typically never rise above the level of motorized infantry with light armor support, as anything heavier is requisitioned into the core Defense Force regiments.
==== The Royal Guard ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Veteran/Fanatical)
The personal command of the High Lady herself, the Royal Guard is the elite of the ACDF, and as such receives the lion's share of the best equipment, including the bulk of the Coalition's heavy and assault-class machines. The quality of said equipment is somewhat surprising for a minor Periphery military formation; the BattleMech and armor battalions incorporate several SLDF-vintage machines of unknown provenance5, and there is rumor that in recent deployments the Royal Guard fielded a number of recent Mech designs incorporating rediscovered LosTech. Efforts to identify the source6 of such advanced technology have thus far proved unsuccessful, and for their part, the Aurigans aren't telling. 
The Royal Guard's livery is the crimson and gold of House Arano, and their emblem is the Arano escutcheon wreathed in flames, hearkening back to the days of the Restoration and the unit's central role.
==== 1st Coalition Guards: The Black Tide ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Veteran/Reliable)
The 2nd Guards' BattleMechs are a mix of medium- and heavy-weight chassis, relying largely upon light vehicles and VTOLs for scouting duty, and backed up by mobile artillery. Their livery is black and dark teal, and their emblem is a black cresting wave set on a light teal square.
==== 2nd Coalition Guards: The Red Scythes ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Regular/Reliable)
The 3rd Guards' BattleMechs are a mix of hard-hitting light- and medium-weight chassis, backed up by medium and heavy armored vehicles for fire support. Their livery is dark green and brown, and their emblem is a crossed pair of scythes with black handles and red blades set on a white circle.
==== 3rd Coalition Guards: Mathurin's Meteorites ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Regular/Reliable)
The 4th Guards' Battlemechs are a mix of hard-hitting light- and medium-weight chassis, backed up by medium and heavy armored vehicles for fire support. Their livery is midnight blue and yellow, and their emblem is a set of three shooting stars over a black diamond.
==== 4th Coalition Guards: The Torchbearers ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Green/Fanatical)
The 4th Guards functions as a high-speed raiding and reconnaissance formation. Their Battlemechs are primarily light- and medium-weight chassis that emphasize mobility, and their vehicles tend to of a similar bent. Their livery is black and crimson, and their emblem is a flaming torch against a black circle.
==== 6th Coalition Guards: the Swordbreakers ====
Combined-arms Regiment (Veteran/Fanatical)
The brainchild of Lord Alexander Madeira and the late Commandant Leilani Kekoa of the Dust Devils, the 6th Guards consists of a battalion of advanced Omni- and BattleMechs (including a full company of Clan models recovered as battlefield salvage by the Devils over two decades of operations against the invaders and secretly sold to the Coalition) supported by a battalion each of heavy combat vehicles and black-market Battle Armor. The core of the regiment was built around veterans of the Coalition's covert Rampart Company and hand-picked individuals from other ACDF units. 
As the presence of such a regiment in the Reach could be viewed as a concern by their neighbors, the existence of the 6th was at first a closely-guarded secret known only to High Lady Arano, Lord Madeira, the Dust Devils, and the Chiefs of Staff of the ACDF, intended as it was to be the Coalition's knife-in-the-dark answer to dire threats to the state's continued existence. The unit's operating costs were covered via off-the-books sources managed by Madeira personally, and a great sacrifice was required to join the unit: According to official records, every member of the 6th is either dead or MIA and presumed lost. As such, the selection process is undertaken with great care and attention to both life situation and dedication to the Coalition, to avoid the risk that ties to a member's prior life may present a security risk. 
Thanks to these measures, the 6th remained unknown even to the Magistracy's renowned Intelligence Ministry right up to the day it finally took the field in 3076 to stop a Federated Suns attempt to occupy Enkra. Intending to use the world to open a new attack avenue into the Taurian Concordat during Operation MATADOR and remind the Coalition of the damage the Suns could inflict should they decide to become active participants in the conflict on the side of their Taurian neighbors, The AFFS sent a battalion of veteran MechWarriors from the 22nd Avalon Hussars backed up by two regiments of armor and infantry from the Capellan March Militia. Forewarned of the impending attack thanks to an intelligence agency that the Suns mostly ignored, the 6th was able to arrive ahead of their opponents through the use of a pirate point, and made landfall with days to spare as the Hussars made their leisurely way from the system's zenith.
The Hussars naturally expected a swift victory over whatever rag-tag opposition the Aurigans could muster; instead, they faced hardened, well-trained veterans with superior equipment to their own. The 6th wiped out the Hussars ground forces to a man and captured their DropShips, allowing one to return to Federated Suns space to inform their superiors of their failure. The AFFS learned a costly lesson in underestimating the Coalition, and the 6th Guards dramatically entered public awareness having finally earned a moniker and emblem to go over their dark grey machines: a shining sword breaking on a red shield.
== Economy ==
Agriculture has always been the central driving force behind the economy of the Aurigan Reach, and despite advances made in other fields over the last few decades, by far the most common occupation among the Coalition's citizenry is "farmer", with "trader" tied for a distant second, and even then, said trade tends to primarily focus on foodstuff and agrotechnologies. Recent investment in heavy industries such as mining and ore processing has also shown good returns, and finds itself a good fit for the overall resource-based economic model that has served the Coalition well historically.
The Coalition is not without its manufacturing capability, however; the long-held world of Mechdur avoidance of much of its contemporaries' decline and degradation allows it to produce a staggering array of consumer and industrial goods, as well as maintaining one of the Rimward Periphery's few functional BattleMech factory complexes. Additionally, the establishment of an industrial colony on Mandalas and new trade outposts on Sacromonte indicate that the Coalition is looking to expand its manufacturing capabilities into the future, boosted substantially by the addition of Detroit and its extensive manufacturing capability.
== Culture & Society ==
The cultural roots of the Aurigan people are chiefly Polynesian, but with traditions filtered through the lenses of Spanish Catholicism and Pakistani Islam by way of the melting pot of the Free Worlds League, from whence most of the Reach's original inhabitants immigrated. Over time, these cultural influences melded into a unique panoply of polytheistic deities, Catholic saints, Protestant theology, and progressive Sharia legal traditions serving as the unlikely cultural glue that holds the various worlds of the Reach together.
The primary spoken and official languages of the Coalition are English, Spanish, and Samoan, with a significant number of Tongan and Urdu speakers. However, more than a dozen other major languages are spoken throughout the region, and splinter dialects and creoles became common among the systems of the Reach during centuries of isolation prior to the Coalition's formation. To this day a degree of cultural isolation exists on some of the Coalition's newer member worlds, and often translators are necessary for clear communication; however, continued expansion of the Coalition's public education system, based on the wildly successful Taurian model, has seen some success in mitigating this while still maintaining respect for cultural diversity. Today, even working-class Aurigans commonly speak two or more languages, and most settlements include professional translators to smooth over any difficulties visitors may have. 
The arts and architecture of the region reflect both the Aurigan people's original cultural heritage and strong Capellan and Taurian influences due to centuries of split rule by those powers. House Arano's seat of power, the Great Palace of Cordia City on Coromodir, for example, was originally a Taurian fortification and maintains that culture's essential principles of balancing form and function. Concentric rings of subtly-designed defensible positions and armories surround a gleaming titanium and concrete castle, built to resemble a crystal formation thrusting up from beneath the world's crust, towering over market squares and residential districts that would not be out of place in the suburbs of the Forbidden City on Sian or the carefully-planned boroughs of Samantha on Taurus.
A melding of the Capellan and Taurian cultural traditions fused well with the familial and oral history structures of the Polynesian diaspora to provide the Aurigan people both a strong sense of the duty of each individual to the welfare and security of their neighbors, and an appreciation for the heroic individual who rises above the common people to overcome some great hardship or solve some terrible crisis. Further fueled by the early, desperate colonial days, it was this cultural mix that allowed Wiremu Arano to propose both a region-wide trade partnership of systems and peoples, while simultaneously elevating himself as the best individual to lead it and paving the way for his daughter Keona to forge the Coalition. Though the practice lapsed somewhat during the Directorate years, the Aurigan educational system and popular culture cast these early Aranos as not just cultural heroes, but great unifiers of the varied individual cultures of the Reach's worlds into one Aurigan people.
== Notes ==
# Santiago Espinosa's wife and Tamati Arano's sister, Ruihi Arano, had passed away in childbirth with Espinosa's daughter, Victoria.
# Liliana Centrella is the eldest daughter of Ana Maria Centrella, Kamea Arano's friend and backer from the Restoration days and a member of a cadet branch of the Canopian royal family.
#As noted in the AU Summary, the increased prominence of the Coalition and the role it plays in the Rimward Periphery in the AU clash with the canonical events around the Treaty of Taurus and the New Colony Region. As such, those events, including Jeffrey Calderon's assassination, do not take place in the AU.
#In the history of the Coalition, House Arano's leader has run unopposed in all elections for the High Lordship save two: Keona Arano, the first to hold the position, and Tamati Arano II, in what perhaps should have been a warning as to what was to come.
#Shortly after the end of the civil war, Lord Medeira funded an expedition to Artru to examine the ruins of Castle Nautilus and ascertain the possibility that some of the LosTech stockpile had survived Yang Virtanen's improvised solution to keeping the Outpost Castle Brian out of the Concordat and Directorate's hands. Such thoroughness paid off when it was discovered that, though the explosion had done a fantastic job of sealing the Castle from anything but the most dedicated excavation, such excavation did uncover a number of Mechs, vehicles, and equipment that were intact or salvageable.
#All that salvage that a certain merc unit was acquiring but not really using had to be going somewhere.
Category:Dust Devils AU
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