[Abe Sargent]

The Problem with Nanking


Nanking is an adjacent, heavily militarized world, next to the Celestial Coalition. It’s a part of the FedCom industrial infrastructure in the Capellan March, and under the auspices of March Lord George Hasek, a fiercely pro-Hasek, anti-everyone guy, who is also fiercely anti-Liao.

Now, thus far, he hasn’t had a major problem with us. Quite the opposite. We have kept a large number of worlds of value out of the hands of the Capellan Confederation. This makes Hasek very happy.

However, he had two worlds just hanging out – Zurich and Nanking, and surrounded by us and House Liao. Zurich has now joined us, and Nanking is sort of naked and exposed. And it's particularly valuable. It’s the home of one of the factories of Kallon Industries, and makes tanks and mechs there. Nanking was Capellan for centuries, but taken in the 4th Succession War by the combined Fed/Com forces. It held out in Operation Guerrero easily enough and Liao never came close to retaking. Sun-Tzu never had the forces.


The Capellan Confederation knows Nanking a lot better than the FedCom, who has been there for about 35 years now. They have drawn up long-standing plans to make a strike against Nanking to reclaim it, but they’ve never had the window of opportunity and units required to do so at the same time.

Sun-Tzu and his forces would much prefer that we had it to the FedCom folks. And, Word of Blake has supplied us with those same plans, and then spent some time on planet placing a few things that will assist our invasion and capture of the planet.


Word of Blake can help us secure the planet as well. But the problem is that we are likely waking the bear.

Right now, George Hasek is extremely insular-focused. He is not concerned with the greater Civil War at all. We agree, really. In fact, George opposed Katrina from the beginning, and was one of the few voices in the FedCom opposed to her taking over from Yvonne Steiner-Davion. He also tried to keep St. Ives Compact free and helped to fight even though Katrina gave Sun-Tzu free reign to reclaim his lost state.

I don’t care much for either Katie or Vic as ruler of a pan-system nation either. One is too much of a White Knight who doesn’t make the smart decisions and the other is too much of a Black Knight who doesn’t make the good decisions. You need both to rule.

Anyway, George is a powerful March lord who’s really interested in taking out Katie, but not to put Vic in place. He thinks both are unsuited to rule, Vic because he abandoned his post and Kate because she’s not a true Davion, and a nasty person too. He has refused both sides the use of his troops. So he’s been staying relatively neutral, moving in units, and quashing rebellions from multiple planets.

If we take Nanking, he will instantly be our enemy, and will come after us on Nanking. He’ll also likely strike against other Coalition targets, such as Genoa or Acamar, that are close to him and really tasty.