Stewart’s native vegetation—incompatible as it was with Terran seed stocks—caused many problems for the world’s initial colonists from the British Isles. Substantial efforts at environmental engineering, however, first on the northern Lanarkshire continent and later on southern Aberdeenshire and Angus, led to a hybrid ecosystem capable of supporting human life without expensive imported foodstuffs.
These efforts also revealed the extensive mineral deposits on the island continent of Highland that gave Stewart its industrial strength. The colony’s early rulers formed the Stewart Confederation, a six-world nation that became a rival to the Marik Commonwealth. Indeed, the Stewart family could easily have played a more substantial role in the affairs of the Free Worlds League than eventually transpired had not David Genovese publicly derided the nascent federation and brought the wrath of Juliano Marik down on his people. In the centuries that followed, Stewart regained its influence, via mercantile rather than political or military means. Only in this century, with the marriage of Ana Stewart to Captain-General Janos Marik, has House Stewart found itself firmly ensconced near the pinnacle of League affairs, and a number of Marik-Stewart descendants have taken up key military and political posts in the League.
Corean Enterprises is the best-known company on Stewart, famed for its Locust and Trebuchet ‘Mech designs as well as for providing components to many other League manufacturers. A substantial and diverse civilian engineering industry also exists on-world, manufacturing and assembling everything from groundcars and blue-water naval vessels to consumer electronics and white goods. Combined with substantial agriculture—a far cry from the colony’s early days—the net result is one of the most self-sufficient worlds in the League. Even tourism has flourished on Stewart, though the kitsch fake clansmen of Highland and Lothian (who claim to “accurately recreate ancient Scotland”) are frequently mocked.
