Draconis Combine

The Draconis Combine is the Successor State in the "North-East" quarter of the Inner Sphere. Ruled by House Kurita since its founding in 2319 by Shrio Kurita, perhaps a descendant of Takeo Kurita. The Chief of State, called the Coordinator, is the head of the Kurita Household. The Coordinator is a hereditary dictator who rules over his domain armed with a well-equiped, fanatical military on the one hand and an ever-pervasive, all-seeing civilian bureaucracy on the other. Two rival intelligence agencies, the ISF (Internal Security Forces) and the O5P (Order of the Five Pillars) keep watch against any potential internal threat from lowly commoners, ambitious nobles, and members of the Coordinator's own family. (However, the physical protection of the Coordinator falls to his own personal cohort, the Otomo, who are recruited from the military, not the intelligence services.)

The idée fixe of the Combine and the Coordinator is conquest. Since the days of Takashi Kurita, the Coordinator has been called the Unifier of Worlds. This is irony: under Takashi's rule, many worlds slipped from the Combine's hands, first to the cession of Rasalhague, then to the invasions of Clan Ghost Bear and Clan Smoke Jaguar. Under the leadership of his son, Theodore Kurita, the Combine has regained some of its worlds and its fearsome reputation. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction with the current regime has lead to the emergence of the Kokuryukai a.k.a. Black Dragon Society, a widespread conspiracy against the new Coordinator and his current policy of detant with House Kurita's traditional rival, House Davion.