The Periphery

The Periphery is a region of space in the BattleTech Universe just outside of the Inner Sphere.

General History

The Periphery encompasses any space outside of the "Inner Sphere" of human civilization, around 550 light years away from Earth. While many individual colonies existed out here before the time of even the Star League, the vast majority of major players out here came to be during the Time of War; often refugees or former statesmen who had become fed up with the Inner Sphere's burgeoning realpolitik and their personal grudges never quite sated. While for a time the people of the Periphery mostly kept to themselves, the Star League's Reunification Wars came like a truck barreling down on a tortoise, and inevitably ended up with a bunch of states who were mostly tied to their personal standards; only achieving freedom during the collapse of the League and even then reeling from the lack of Star League resources, all suffered quite a bit for a while during the Succession Wars, but were otherwise able to recover due to the fact that they were in fact powers at this point, and have been suffering and succeeding throughout the years ever since by either shacking up with other Periphery groups, or getting in good with an enterprising Clan.

The Piranha Principle of Periphery Defense

While there are something akin to "major" powers in the Periphery, most of them don't have even close to the amount of territory that even the smallest state in the Inner Sphere does. While normally in this universe this would mean that the Periphery powers were in inevitable danger from being conquered wholesale or demolished, their relative positions meant that they simply could not be subjugated unless the entire Inner Sphere was united, which it very much hasn't been since the fall of the Star League, leading to the "Piranha Principle" of defense for the Periphery.

The Free Worlds League for example, could probably eat the Magistracy of Canopus for breakfast if it wanted to. But if it did that, it would be turning a large portion of it's armed forces away from it's borders to attack a series of wildly popular strip-club worlds that would rather salt the earth they were walking on than hand it over to filthy imperialist Spheroids, and as a result of all that fighting that would break out, it's immediate stellar neighbors, the Lyran Commonwealth and the Capellan Confederation, would almost certainly pounce and begin making major gains into their own territory. Thus, while the Periphery's big wigs have individually seen centuries of war, it has only ever been brought to heel twice in history.

Life in the Periphery

Depending on who you ask, life in the Periphery is either absolute freedom and fun; unrestrained by the Inner Sphere's bullshit and backwards way of life, or a backwater filled with bumpkins and pirates who didn't appreciate how good they had it under the Inner Sphere's control. As with most things in the BattleTech universe, both of these things can be true and untrue at any given time.

For one thing; the security of living in a massive stellar empire with reams upon reams of well-organized units of lances is never a real option, since the number of raw resources and support from your neighbor is extremely diminished. Further, the technology level varies wildly from planet to planet, with only major players in the Periphery being able to say they can go toe-to-toe with the Inner Sphere. Some planets aren't even at the level of 20th century man given how badly a hand they were dealt. Some might even be back even further. As a result of the lax security, all manner of pirates and criminal elements hide out in the Periphery where they're too far for the big states to reach them and too slippery for the local neighbors to catch. Smugglers do their best work out here, as the ever present danger of piracy means even local planets have to ask for help to keep resources flowing.

But if you can get in good with people in one of the major powers, or even a few of the middle powers out in the periphery, you will find that the Periphery is often a better deal than that of the Inner Sphere; most major powers guarantee rights to their citizens or to people within their borders, and often have a lot more fun and interesting career opportunities than the Spheroid way of doing things; where people's name means more than their ability to get shit done. It's this disparity that ultimately keeps both the Inner Sphere and the Periphery in the current uneasy situation they find themselves in; the Periphery is both not worth the effort and also not worth the potential counterattacks to try and conquer again.

Further, unlike the Inner Sphere, the Clans really didn't give a shit what they were doing, so they got off relatively easy on that front.

Powers of the Periphery

While most states in the Periphery are generally considered mostly just bandit kingdoms and corporations that've lost the plot, there are genuine powers out here that have quality of life somewhat comparable to that of the Inner Sphere.

• Taurian Concordate - The Largest power in the Periphery at any given time. Fiercely argumentative, xenophobic, and the most open about their hatred of the Inner Sphere, but the Federated Suns most especially.
• Magistracy of Canopus - The second largest power. Canopus is everything the Taurians aren't; accepting to almost the point of madness, and exceptionally hedonistic as a matter of government policy. It is in many ways the galaxy's party destination; and the party never ends.
• Outworlds Alliance/Raven Alliance - A bunch of hippies and pacifists who border the Draconis Combine. While they've managed to hold their own, they have routinely been the subject of the realities of life in the Periphery and the realities of being such a small state sitting next to two of the most openly imperialistic powers in the game, only saved at the moment by Clan Snow Raven asking if they could join up.
• Rim Worlds Republic - The place where Stefan Amaris was from. Formerly the largest state in the Periphery at over 200+ worlds, it was utterly crushed in the Amaris Civil War, and most of it's assets absorbed into the Lyran Commonwealth if it wasn't just left to rot.
• Marian Hegemony - Some rich asshole struck it even more rich by finding a massive deposit of germanium, and it has only spiraled further from there. Mostly Roman themed, including having Capital-S Slavery as a legal institution. As you can guess nobody likes them.
• Fronc Reaches - A state made by Taurian and Capellan settlers that were at one point mutually peacekeep'd by both states, but ultimately found themselves becoming more distant over time, especially given the state of their taxation, and took the Magistrix and the Protector of the Realm hostage to show they were serious once. Many people were killed in the ensuing brawl, and when that was sorted, they sued to statehood, getting it from the Inner Sphere and other powers closer to it. While exceedingly small, the Jihad swelled it's population thanks to refugees flooding in, and the Colonial Marshals, previously the major force of law and order for both Canopus and Taurian interests that defected, have been x-factors in keeping the Canopians and Taurians from trying to assert themselves ever again.
• Oberon Confederation - The Bandit kingdom that fancies itself as a real boy state. Born from the Oberon pirate fleet, it exists at the very edge of the HPG network, and as a result is very mysterious; both because very few (rightfully) trust them and because they're rarely actually seen being seriously affected by life outside the Periphery, even getting invaded by Clans didn't actually change much.
• Aurigan Coalition - The nation created for the HBS BattleTech video game. A mercantile state that rarely if ever got much notice, only becoming noteworthy when a massive civil war broke out across their worlds.

The rest are either pirate kingdoms, or got erased from the history books by the Clan Invasion. Anything past that is located in the Deep Periphery, which (with the exception of the Clans) may as well not exist.