Though every Inner Sphere nation is a product of the people and events that molded it, the Draconis Combine, more than most, has been shaped by a few prominent individuals and a single, dominant culture. Shiro Kurita, the Combine's founder, began with a single planet. By the time of his death five decades later, he ruled over a sizable empire of more than sixty worlds. His descendants have since used their kinship with him and the Japanese cultural tradition from which he came to forge an empire of formidable military strength, indomitable courage and universal devotion to House Kurita.