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How did Braham Essex really push the Celestial Coalition? What did he learn?
He was at the Fall of Andurien, and the rise and fall of Rasalhague. He fought for the St. Ives Compact. He saw what worked and didn’t work. The biggest issue with the Duchy is that their war against the Confederation waited too long. After the 4th Succession War, the Duchy/Magistracy alliance and assault into the Confederation took too long to organize and attack. They needed to spring with the hot iron, and their failure to do that immediately resulted in its failure, which led to the Duchy not having enough strength to survive the Marik-Andurien conflict.
He learned to strike quickly.
However, one major difference was how the Coalition was formed. Most other small states have been formed due to a rebellion or civil war or something. That causes bad feelings. We carved our own state out of the Chaos March. Every free planet in the March is now ours (save for Northwind and Outreach) with three extra worlds to boot (Nanking, Errai, Zurich).
The major shift in power was when we won the Manassas from Smoke Jaguars in a Trial of Possession deep in their territory in the 3050s. Then we traded it to ComStar for the Swift Victory and a bunch of other stuff. One Aegis traded for another. That mission got us an Okinawa DropShip captured by raiders we captured, and traded back to the Combine for a Vengeance DropShip (that gave us 40 fighters). Then we got a WarShip, the Elephant DropShip, a bunch of Star League era fighters for our stuff, some other DropShips and such, more than 30 clan mechs, and it was the best mission we ever did. That set up everything else.
We bought a WarShip, captured one, captured another, traded it for four junks; one of which we sold for the other three to get fixed . Now we have 6 WarShips, and it all began with that module that gave us one.
Using the naval forces, we were able to push the Chaos March around and help bring in pirates and recalcitrant foes equally.
That WarShip gave us a flotilla that brought us a lot of DropShips from battles, such as Nanking, Sirius and Procyon, Arboris and others. Meanwhile we were able to win planets like Caph and Nanking and Acamar and other world with it.
Now add in a desire to strike when the iron is hot with worlds like Keid and New Home, Genoa and Nanking, Errai and the raid of Quentin.
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