Post by High Marshal Timmah on Dec 17, 2009 4:26:13 GMT -5
The history of human life among the stars, the creation of the great star empires and the formation of the human society known as the Clans began with humanity's first steps into space. Among the ancient nations of Terra, the dissolution of traditional alliances and enmities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries created an era of unprecedented peace and cooperation, in which all human societies turned their energies toward the advancement of the human race. By 2020, the groundbreaking research of two scientists - Thomas Kearny and Takayoshi Fuchida - led to the development of a fusion reactor capable of powering a starship. In 2027, the Alliance starship Columbia, powered by the first Kearny-Fuchida fusion engine, made its historic journey to Mars. With that brief voyage, Man's migration from Terra began.
In 2102, the scientific community paid new attention to pan-dimensional gravitational mathematics, a breakthrough discovery made eighty years earlier by Kearny and Fuchida. Though twenty-first-century scientists had scoffed at this theory, twenty-second-century physicists used Kearny and Fuchida's work to develop the first faster-than-light ship in an intensive research effort known as the Deimos Project. Deimos produced the first Kearny-Fuchida drive, which created a space warp around a starship through which the craft could "jump" distances of up to thirty light years from its starting point. On 5 December 2108, Terra launched the first so-called JumpShip, the TAS Pathfinder, on its famous round trip between Terra and the Tau Ceti system.
The ability to travel between star systems in the blink of an eye led to an unparalleled expansion of human colonies to other worlds. The first human colony of New Earth, established on Tau Ceti IV in 2116, paved the way for hundreds of others. Under the banner of the Terran Alliance, man spread throughout the galaxy as his ancestors had once swarmed over Terra. By the year 2235, an Alliance survey had counted more than six hundred human colonies that had scattered across a sphere roughly eighty light years in diameter.
In a parallel to earlier human history, however, this colonial expansion carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. Self-sufficient colonies far from their founding worlds began agitating for home rule; in 2236, a group of worlds at the edge of human-explored space declared independence from Terra. The Colonial Marines, dispatched from Earth to quell the rebellion, failed miserably. Within six years, the Alliance government had granted independence to all colonies that lay more than thirty light years from Terra.
RISE OF THE HEGEMONY
Over the next several decades, a combination of political infighting and the severe economic strain of supporting Terran colonies ate away at the fabric of the Terran Alliance. Tales of colonists starving to death sparked riots among sympathetic Terrans, while the ranks of the poor, dispossessed and angry grew. In 2314, civilian riots and political polarization erupted into Alliance-wide civil war. The Alliance Global Militia, which had remained uneasily neutral throughout the long years of unrest, stepped in to stop the violence at the behest of James McKenna, an admiral in the Alliance Global Navy. Using his newfound authority as the Alliance's military savior, McKenna tore down the corrupt Alliance government and established the Terran Hegemony in its place. In 2316, a grateful public elected him the Hegemony's first Director-General.
During McKenna's twenty-three-year term of office, he launched three military campaigns to bring independent colony worlds back under Hegemony control. The first two campaigns, though hard-fought, were largely successful; the third, launched in 2335, was not. The aging McKenna left control of the final campaign to his son Konrad, whose persistent refusal to follow standard procedure eventually ended in disaster for the Hegemony Navy. In 2338 Konrad led his naval convoys blindly into the heavily mined Syrma system, losing all but two of his twenty-nine troopships. This failure also gave heart to the worlds opposing the Hegemony, who had begun to ally with each other in order to protect themselves from the expanding Hegemony influence. Konrad's disgrace left the Hegemony without an heir to fill McKenna's place; upon James McKenna's death in 2339, the Hegemony's High Council passed the leadership of the Hegemony to James McKenna's third cousin, Michael Cameron. The new Director-General immediately began efforts to cement good relations with the allied colony worlds that had by this time formed independent nations.
In 2351, Michael Cameron took an action, the cultural repercussions of which would echo for centuries. He created the Peer List, establishing the equivalent of feudal nobility whose members owed their exalted rank to their achievements. Among the first to receive a title was Dr. Gregory Atlas, lauded for his work on refining myomer bundles. These incredibly powerful synthetic muscles were an integral part of early WorkMechs; when powered by a fusion reactor, myomer bundles give a BattleMech its strength and mobility. Though Dr. Atlas would not live to see the first BattleMech - used in action on 5 February 2439 - his work ultimately changed the face of war.
Inevitably, Cameron's Peer List led to the creation of feudal ruling families in the various independent states surrounding the Hegemony. In the latter half of the twenty-fourth and early twenty-fifth centuries, tensions between these fiefdoms escalated into open war. Humanity's interstellar nations fought battle after battle against each other, each more savage than the last, culminating in the unspeakable massacre of civilians on the world of Tintavel in the Capellan Confederation. The Confederation's leader, Chancellor Aleisha Liao, responded to the tragedy by devising the Ares Conventions - a set of rules for warfare intended to keep such atrocities from ever happening again. On 13 June 2412, the Hegemony and all other nations signed the Ares Conventions, agreeing to limit their use of nuclear weapons and cease assaulting civilian targets. Though hailed as an act of peace, the Ares Conventions in effect made war legal. Many of the signatory states wasted little time in abusing their legal right to wage warfare.
THE STAR LEAGUE ERA
The Hegemony engaged in its share of battles over the next century or so, but equally as often served as a neutral mediator between warring parties. Despite the Hegemony's history of military expansion, the presence of Terra at its heart gave it a certain credibility as a peacemaker in the eyes of other nations. Ian Cameron, who became Director-General in 2549, expanded the Hegemony's peacemaking role and negotiated an end to a number of conflicts. In 2556, Ian persuaded the leaders of the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation to sign the Treaty of Geneva; this famous document laid the groundwork for the formation of the Star League, the glorious interstellar alliance that ended wars and advanced the welfare of all humanity. The Lyran Commonwealth signed the treaty in 2558, the Federated Suns in 2567. With the inclusion of the Draconis Combine in 2569, Ian Cameron achieved his dream of uniting virtually all humanity under one ruler.
Led by the enlightened Cameron dynasty, the Star League gave its citizens peace and prosperity for two hundred years. Though even the Star League could not completely wipe out the human need for conflict, it kept disputes between its member-states under firm control. After Lord Simon Cameron's tragic death in 2751, the rulers of all the member-states served as regents for Simon's young son, Richard Cameron, but unfortunately abused their positions to jockey for personal power. The lonely Richard turned to Stefan Amaris, ruler of the Rim Worlds Republic in the far-off Periphery, for friendship and advice. Amaris hated the Camerons, and used his false friendship with Richard to destroy the Star League from within. On 27 December 2766, Stefan Amaris murdered Richard and took control of the Star League.
Within weeks of his coup d'etat, Amaris tried and failed to gain the support of General Aleksandr Kerensky, commander of the Star League Defense Forces. The honorable Kerensky despised the usurper Amaris and launched a bitter, thirteen-year war to liberate the Terran Hegemony from his grasp. On 29 September 2779, Kerensky led the assault against Amaris's final stronghold on Terra. In the face of overwhelming force, Amaris surrendered. By order of General Kerensky, Amaris, his family and his closest aides were summarily executed by SLDF troops for their crimes against humanity. This act of vengeance closed the book on the Star League.
In late 2780, the Council Lords stripped General Kerensky of his title as Protector of the Realm and ordered him to disperse all SLDF units to their peacetime locations. Bereft of central leadership, the member-states of the Star League vied with each other for power. They were unable to agree on which of them should become the new First Lord of the Star League, so the lords officially dissolved the High Council in August of 2781. Each lord then left Terra for home and began to build his own power base.
When the various lords attempted to persuade SLDF units to back their personal bids for power, General Kerensky took drastic action. On 14 February 2784, Kerensky proposed to his troops that the SLDF should leave the Inner Sphere and found a new society beyond known space, basing that society on the dearly held ideals of the Star League. In late November of 2784, Kerensky's Operation Exodus became a reality; more than 80 percent of the SLDF departed with Kerensky. The bewildered people of the Inner Sphere, mourning the loss of their hero, comforted themselves with the belief that Kerensky and his people would return when humanity needed them.
CENTURIES OF WAR
In the resulting power vacuum, the rulers of the realms now called the Successor States fought endless, brutal wars, each seeking to re-establish the Star League under his own leadership. In three hundred years of conflict, the Successor Lords accomplished little save to blast humankind virtually back to the Stone Age. By the time the third of the so-called Succession Wars ended, humanity had lost nearly every technological advance that the Star League had made possible; only stringent restrictions on destroying JumpShips, DropShips, BattleMechs and other irreplaceable technologies of war allowed interstellar combat to continue. As the Successor States battered each other senseless, the fighting ground down to endless border skirmishes in which no combatant gained significant advantage.
As the Inner Sphere warred, so did the descendants of the SLDF. Within two decades of planetfall, the men and women who had followed Kerensky in order to preserve the ideals of the Star League had betrayed those ideals and degenerated into vicious, fratricidal conflict. Determined to salvage something from the wreckage of his father's dream, Kerensky's son Nicholas led eight hundred loyal followers to a safe haven, where together they forged the society later known to history as the Clans. Though the Clans would not arrive in force in the Inner Sphere until 3049, they did send one unit as a vanguard in 3005 - Wolf's Dragoons. This famed mercenary unit fought for each of the Successor States in turn, testing the strength of their militaries. Ultimately, the Clan-born Dragoons would become one of the strongest units fighting against the Clans on the side of the Inner Sphere.
STEPS TOWARD PEACE
By the turn of the thirty-first century, common wisdom among Successor State militaries held that conquest of the Inner Sphere through conventional warfare was impossible. Those who wished to found a second Star League had to find another way. In 3020, Archon Katrina Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth sent a peace proposal to her fellow Successor Lords, but only Prince Hanse Davion of the Federated Suns showed any interest. In 3022, the Archon and the Prince concluded a secret alliance that would bind their realms together through Hanse Davion's marriage to Katrina's daughter and heir, Melissa Steiner. This union joined two families and two nations into a single strong realm, combining the prosperous Lyran Commonwealth with the militarily powerful Federated Suns. The union of these states put the Draconis Combine in an uncomfortable position between two of its greatest enemies, and led the smaller Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League to fear conquest by the emerging Federated Commonwealth.
After months of secret negotiations between the Capellan Confederation, Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League, all three of those nations signed the Concord of Kapetyn in 3024. Intended as a counter to the Lyran Commonwealth - Federated Suns alignment, this triple alliance provided for mutual support and defense. It also guaranteed that any renewed war would engulf the entire Inner Sphere.
FOURTH SUCCESSION WAR
On 20 August 3028, Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner held their wedding on Terra in the presence of their fellow Successor Lords. At the reception following the wedding, Hanse Davion offered a gift to his bride. As he fed Melissa a piece of wedding cake, Prince Hanse announced, "Wife, in honor of our marriage, in addition to this morsel I give you a vast prize. My love, I give you the Capellan Confederation!" With those words, Hanse Davion launched the Fourth Succession War.
In a series of military exercises held between 3026 and 3028, Hanse Davion had discovered that he could move vast numbers of troops swiftly to distant battlefields. He had also reorganized his army, regrouping battalions and regiments into Regimental Combat Teams consisting of one or more regiments of BattleMechs plus armor, infantry and artillery support. This organization gave Davion troops overwhelming advantages in numbers. The RCTs poured into the Capellan Confederation in seven successive waves, cutting it in half.
Such large-scale mobilization by the Federated Suns did not come without cost. The vast demand for JumpShips and DropShips to ferry troops across space reduced commerce between worlds to essential items only, inflicting economic hardship on many planets. In addition, the Holy Order of ComStar, whose members had preserved the technology of interstellar communications ever since the fall of the Star League, opposed Hanse Davion's war and placed the Federated Suns under Interdiction. ComStar's hyperpulse generators would relay no messages to, from or between any Federated Suns worlds. Hampered by the Interdiction and pleased with his conquests, Hanse Davion sued for peace in 3029. The battered Capellan Confederation agreed willingly to the Federated Suns' terms, desperate to free its scant military resources for use against other enemies. The Free Worlds League had exploited the Confederation's weakened state, taking more than a few worlds for itself; the Confederation's leadership could no longer afford war with House Davion if it hoped to preserve the nation.
SKIRMISHES AND PLOTS
Between 3029 and 3039, the Successor States jockeyed for power through covert dealings and small skirmishes in lieu of outright war. The Federated Commonwealth completed the integration of its militaries, governments, economies and conquered worlds, forming the largest and most powerful realm in the Inner Sphere. Meanwhile, the Draconis Combine took one lesson from the Fourth Succession War to heart, and overhauled its military in response to Hanse Davion's "lightning war."
In his role as the Combine's Gunji-no-Kanrei, or Deputy of Military Affairs, Theodore Kurita took several steps to ensure his nation's safety. He revamped the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery, upgrading their training and loosening the command structure to reward personal initiative. In his most controversial act, Theodore signed a compact with ComStar, granting independence to several Combine worlds in exchange for ComStar's Star League-era BattleMechs. As a result, on 13 March 3034, the Free Rasalhague Republic announced its independence from the Draconis Combine.
The declaration of independence touched off a minor rebellion within the Combine, as reactionary commanders refused to pull their military units from the new republic. Theodore declared the reactionaries ronin, lordless, and sent his own units to drive them from Free Rasalhague. Theodore's troops and various mercenary groups joined the Republic's Kungsärmé in battle against the ronin, but poor contracts negotiated in haste with the mercenaries paid most too much money for too little fighting. Free Rasalhague won the freedom it had claimed, but its citizens learned to loathe the mercenary MechWarrior.
In April of 3039, Hanse Davion set in motion the second great wave of his war to unite the Inner Sphere. Selecting the Draconis Combine as his target, he launched a two-front attack on the Dieron district. The first assault wave succeeded brilliantly; Davion's military advisors believed they had taken the Combine by surprise. Before Federated Commonwealth forces could launch their second wave, however, the Combine counterattacked and threw the Commonwealth on the defensive. Aided by the Star League 'Mechs he had received from ComStar, Theodore Kurita gambled with the fate of his nation and won. By attacking in the teeth of the Davion onslaught, Theodore made Hanse Davion believe the DCMS stronger than it actually was. Hanse Davion saw no reason to grind his troops down against soldiers armed with superior Star League-era technology, and by October of 3039, Davion chose to cut his losses and make peace.
The War of 3039 accomplished little for those who fought it, save to remind the Successor States of the severe cost of war. A few worlds changed hands, but the balance of power remained the same. Aside from an assault in 3041, in which the Tenth Lyran Guards took the world of Skondia from the Combine, the states of the Inner Sphere seemed content to rebuild their realms in peace. Military readiness and overcharged rhetoric still ruled the day, but the Successor States had - at least temporarily - grown tired of war. The Inner Sphere rebuilt during ten years of peace, which ended abruptly on 13 August 3049.
ENEMIES FROM BEYOND
In that year, while hunting pirates in the Periphery near the Free Rasalhague Republic, a detachment of the famed Kell Hounds mercenary unit met and succumbed to a mysterious fighting force on a planet known as The Rock. Casualties included Phelan Kell, only son of the Hounds' founder Morgan Kell and cousin to Victor Steiner-Davion, Hanse and Melissa's eldest son. Phelan was listed as missing and presumed dead, but the Inner Sphere did not learn his true fate until several months later. The Kell Hounds' defeat marked the first of many battles lost to the Clans, mighty warriors descended from the long-vanished Star League Army. The Clans invaded the Inner Sphere in order to conquer it and restore their version of the Star League.
In March of 3050, the Clans struck in force, hammering the Draconis Combine, the Free Rasalhague Republic and the Lyran side of the Federated Commonwealth. Wave after wave of Clan attacks followed, executed with blinding speed and ruthless efficiency. Using their technologically superior OmniMechs and tenacious armored infantry known as Elementals, Clan warriors cut down their Inner Sphere opponents like wheat before a scythe. Four Clans rolled across the Inner Sphere in the first wave: Clans Smoke Jaguar, Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon and Wolf. All took their share of planets, but Clan Wolf conquered more worlds than all its compatriots. Inner Sphere forces launched a few successful counterattacks, but those strikes came too little and too late. The Clan juggernaut thundered on, halted only when catastrophe struck.
On 31 October 3050, a Rasalhagian pilot named Tyra Miraborg crashed her Shilone fighter into the Clan flagship Dire Wolf, killing the Clans' war leader. The death of the ilKhan accomplished what six months of desperate fighting had not; the Clans ended their assaults, garrisoned the worlds they had conquered and pulled much of their military strength out of the Inner Sphere. For several months, later dubbed the Year of Peace, the leaders of each Clan debated the question of who should be the new ilKhan. In mid-3051, they chose Khan Ulric Kerensky of Clan Wolf to lead a renewed assault against the Inner Sphere.
In this year of peace, Colonel Jaime Wolf of Wolf's Dragoons summoned the leaders of the Successor States to the world of Outreach. There, Wolf revealed that he and his fellow Dragoons were actually Clan warriors - and that they were prepared to aid the Inner Sphere against their own people. The Inner Sphere leaders spent the better part of that year formulating a combined response to the overwhelming Clan threat. Setting aside centuries' worth of mistrust between their two nations, Hanse Davion and Theodore Kurita sealed a non-aggression pact. Davion also extorted material aid from the Free Worlds League by promising its leader, Thomas Marik, that he would devote all the resources of the New Avalon Institute of Science toward curing Thomas's son, Joshua, of leukemia.
In November of 3051, the Clans renewed their invasion of the Inner Sphere. In January 3052, Clans Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat attacked the Combine capital of Luthien. In an act of unexpected political courage that sealed the loose alliance between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine, Hanse Davion sent the Kell Hounds and Wolf's Dragoons to help defend his age-old enemy's homeworld. The trust engendered between the two nations by Davion's action enabled both to devote all their efforts to fighting the Clans.
Despite the close cooperation between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine, the Inner Sphere's unity remained largely an illusion. ComStar had negotiated with the Clans soon after the initial invasion, and upon their return to the Inner Sphere the Order offered to administrate the Clans' conquered worlds. ComStar's leader, Primus Myndo Waterly, intended to use the Clan conquest to bring about the collapse of civilization; ComStar would then step in as humanity's savior, gaining power over all of human-occupied space.
When Waterly discovered that the Clans intended to conquer Terra, ComStar's homeworld and the cradle of humanity, she abruptly changed her tactics. At the urging of her Precentor Martial, Anastasius Focht, Waterly struck a deal with the invaders and sent the Com Guards to fight the Clans on the backwater world of Tukayyid. If the Clans won, ComStar would give them Terra. If they lost, the Clans would halt their advance toward Terra for fifteen years. Unknown to the Precentor Martial, Waterly also set secret plans in motion to strike at the Clans and the Inner Sphere simultaneously.
The Com Guards defeated the Clans on Tukayyid in May of 3052, in a horrific blood bath that cost ComStar's forces dearly. While the Com Guards fought and died on Tukayyid to save the Inner Sphere, Primus Waterly gave the word to her agents. They launched Operation Scorpion, making a series of covert attacks on worlds in the Clan occupation zones and striking at communications sites across the Inner Sphere. By this bold gambit, Waterly hoped to cripple both the Inner Sphere and the Clans in the same blow, enabling her ComStar loyalists to seize power. The strikes failed; upon Focht's return to Terra, he deposed Primus Waterly and began a massive reform of ComStar.
VICTORY AND CHANGE
The end of the Clan invasion brought other changes in its wake. Hanse Davion died of a massive heart attack at the end of the war; Chancellor Romano Liao of the Capellan Confederation died at the hands of an assassin, leaving her son Sun-Tzu on the Celestial Throne. Sun-Tzu immediately began to build a power base, allying himself to House Marik through an engagement to Thomas Marik's illegitimate daughter, Isis. Within a few short years, Theodore Kurita succeeded his father Takashi as Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. Ryan Steiner, perennial thorn in the side of the Federated Commonwealth's rulers, began agitating for an independent Isle of Skye. ComStar, meanwhile, split into two factions over Precentor Focht's reforms. The reactionary group, calling itself Word of Blake, emigrated to the Free Worlds League planet of Gibson with Thomas Marik's blessing.
On 19 June 3055, a bomb blast at a charity event on Tharkad killed the Federated Commonwealth's beloved Archon, Melissa Steiner. Authorities failed to apprehend a suspect. Ryan Steiner, riding the crest of anti-Davion sentiment he had spent years creating, accused Archon Prince Victor Steiner-Davion of engineering Melissa's death in order to ascend her throne. Ryan's native Isle of Skye, already seething with secessionist fever, erupted in open rebellion. Victor's sister, Katrina, tried to mediate between her brother and the rebel faction with little success.
In April of 3056, Victor's aide and Katrina's lover, Galen Cox, fell victim to a bombing attack in a Solaris hotel that narrowly missed Katrina. Four days later, an unknown assassin shot Ryan Steiner dead. Suspicion centered on Ryan's aide, but many people suspected that Victor ordered Ryan's death to silence his allegations about the death of Archon Melissa. In an effort to defuse the hostilities in the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth, Victor declared the Lyran world of Tharkad and the Davion world of New Avalon co-capitals. He then shifted his government to New Avalon and left Tharkad in Katrina's hands, naming his sister as his official regent. This move, coupled with Ryan's death, quelled the rebellion - but the brief peace could not last.
Victor arrived on New Avalon only to be faced with the disturbing news that Joshua Marik was dying of leukemia despite the best efforts of the NAIS to save him. Knowing that his realm still desperately needed war materiel that only the Free Worlds League could provide, Victor could not afford to lose the only hold he had over Captain-General Thomas Marik. Victor replaced the dying child with a substitute. Marik, however, had his suspicions. He soon learned that the Joshua Marik on New Avalon was not his son, but a duplicate. To retaliate for the death of his son, Marik sent troops into the Commonwealth's Sarna March.
A horrified Katrina publicly denounced Victor for his deception, recalled all Lyran troops to her half of the Federated Commonwealth, severed relations with her brother's realm and announced the formation of a neutral Lyran Alliance. In conjunction with Marik's invasion, Sun-Tzu Liao sent Capellan troops into the Sarna March to reconquer worlds his grandfather had lost during the Fourth Succession War. Aided by Katrina's neutrality and united by their hatred for House Davion, Marik and Liao prosecuted their war against the Federated Commonwealth with surprising speed and success.
As the threat of a wider war between the nations of the Inner Sphere loomed, political infighting between the Clans intensified. The Clans had long been divided into two camps: the Crusaders, who sought to restore the Star League to the Inner Sphere through conquest, and the Wardens, who believed their responsibility lay in safeguarding the Inner Sphere until the Great Houses reestablished the Star League on their own. Many of the Clans, especially Clan Jade Falcon, chafed beneath the truce that ilKhan Kerensky had signed and gladly seized any excuse to break it.
Opposition to the Truce of Tukayyid soon erupted into a Clan-style civil war between Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolf, known as the Refusal War. Led by Phelan Kell, who had risen among his Clan captors to become Khan Phelan Ward of Clan Wolf, a significant portion of Clan Wolf's warriors fled to the safe haven of the Kell Hounds' homeworld, Arc-Royal. The rest of Clan Wolf fought a losing battle against the Jade Falcons.
Both conflicts ended suddenly and swiftly, in a surprising series of twists. Having taken back from Victor Davion the worlds that had once belonged to the Free Worlds League, Thomas Marik concluded a peace treaty with the Archon Prince. Sun-Tzu Liao, unwilling to continue his own campaign in the absence of Marik's backing, grudgingly agreed to end hostilities. The Kell Hounds, having refused Katrina Steiner's demand for aid in defending the Lyran Alliance against Capellan aggression, established an anti-Clan defensive zone centered on Arc-Royal. By this act, the mercenary unit carved its own fiefdom out of Katrina's realm. In the oddest turn of events, the Wolves who had battled the Jade Falcons were Absorbed by that Clan, then won freedom from their Jade Falcon conquerors, lead by Khan Vlad Ward.
THE UNIVERSE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
The first five years after Tukayyid, tumultuous though they were, seemed positively tranquil compared to the explosive events of 3058 - 3061. Those years saw many of the certainties by which Clan and Inner Sphere alike had lived violently overturned, giving way to a new order fraught with possibilities and perils.
In the wake of the Sarna March invasion, the Word of Blake seized its chance to capture Terra, cradle of humanity and ComStar's stronghold. Troop movements from the Free Worlds League into the so-called Chaos March provided cover for the Word of Blake Militia to move several divisions within striking distance of humanity's homeworld, and the high demand for mercenary troops in that same region of space did the rest. Brion's Legion, a mercenary unit that had constituted nearly half the strength of ComStar's Terran Defense Force since the Fourth Succession War, abruptly ended its ComStar contract in favor of a higher-paying Chaos March assignment. Unwilling to relocate Com Guard forces from the Clan border, ComStar's Precentor Martial chose to replace Brion's Legion with another mercenary unit - the Twenty-first Centauri Lancers. The Lancers, however, never arrived on Terra. Instead, the Word of Blake sent its own troops, who masqueraded as the Lancers for long enough to move the rest of their forces into position.
In late February of 3058, the Word of Blake struck from the inside as well as on the battlefield. The Com Guards on Terra were taken by surprise and unable to use the planet's formidable defenses because of Blakist sabotage. They fought a bloody but ultimately losing battle across every Terran continent. By early March of 3058, the Word of Blake held Terra in an iron grip from which it has yet to be dislodged. Precentor Martial Focht of ComStar declined to attempt the reconquest of Terra as long as the Clans remained a greater threat to the Inner Sphere.
During those same months, Clan Jade Falcon drove deep into the Lyran Alliance and captured several planets until Inner Sphere forces stopped the Falcon advance on the world of Coventry. Conceived as a show of strength in the aftermath of the Refusal War, the Coventry campaign was to have far more ominous consequences for the Clans than the Falcon commanders could have anticipated. On Coventry, the Falcons were deprived of victory by two events: strikes by Khan Vlad Ward's Wolves at worlds in the Jade Falcon occupation zone, and the arrival of a coalition force from across the Inner Sphere, led by Prince Victor Steiner-Davion of the Federated Commonwealth.
The Inner Sphere and Jade Falcon armies were evenly matched; neither side could win Coventry without a protracted and bloody battle, and both commanders realized it. Prince Victor invoked the Clan rite of safcon to ensure a safe landing for his troops, and then offered Falcon Khan Marthe Pryde the only honorable way out - hegira, the traditional right of a defeated enemy to leave the field with his forces and honor intact. Under other circumstances, Pryde might have refused; with the Wolf Khan making clear his intent to attack her Clan's holdings, however, she could not afford to leave those worlds defended by mere garrison troops. She accepted hegira and the Jade Falcons left Coventry without another shot being fired.
THE STAR LEAGUE REBORN
In October of 3058, the leaders of the various Inner Sphere powers gathered on the Lyran capital of Tharkad to accomplish peacefully what they had failed to achieve during centuries of war - the rebirth of the Star League. Despite the deep divisions that remained among them, fueled by the legions of dead soldiers and civilians from all sides, the rulers of the Inner Sphere agreed to join together for a single purpose - to end the Clan threat, once and for all. To prove themselves a force to be reckoned with, the new Star League chose to destroy a single Clan: the Smoke Jaguars. Initially, the Star League intended only to drive the Jaguars out of their occupation zone. Information from a Clan traitor, however, enabled them to strike at Clan Smoke Jaguar's homeworld as well.
In 3059 and 3060, Clan Smoke Jaguar died at the hands of the combined armies of the Inner Sphere. Their occupation zone overrun, their homeworld in ruins and their warrior caste decimated, the Jaguars essentially ceased to exist. The Inner Sphere force then turned its attention toward the rest of the Clans. Lacking the might to defeat the entire Clan military, Prince Victor Steiner-Davion led his forces to Strana Mechty, the heart of Clan space and Clan culture. There, they defeated the Crusader Clans in a hard-fought Trial of Refusal. The Crusaders' defeat ended the invasion in a way none of its proponents could have envisioned. Far from taking Terra and rebuilding the Star League in the Clans' image, the Crusader Clans found themselves locked into their Inner Sphere occupation zones or driven from the Inner Sphere entirely.
Clan Nova Cat, which had sided with the Inner Sphere in obedience to the mystic visions of its leaders, was given its own fiefdom in the Draconis Combine. For what their fellow Clans termed treason, the Nova Cats were Abjured and their holdings in Clan space found forfeit. Clan Ghost Bear, which chose not to fight in the Trial for a cause it no longer believed in, also became a permanent presence in the Inner Sphere, claiming the majority of the Free Rasalhague Republic as their Dominion.
Clan Steel Viper suffered the most humiliating fate of all the Invading Clans, next to the shattered Smoke Jaguars. Thinking to take advantage of Jade Falcon weakness in the aftermath of the Refusal War, the Vipers challenged Falcon dominance of the two Clans' shared occupation zone. They failed, and left the Inner Sphere rather than be destroyed by their Falcon antagonists.
As the man who ended the most fearsome threat the Inner Sphere had ever known, Victor Steiner-Davion should have been the hero of the hour. In the eyes of many, he was - but his own people were not among them. The Prince had left his youngest sister, Yvonne Steiner-Davion, as regent on New Avalon in his absence. He returned to the Inner Sphere to find Yvonne deposed and the Federated Commonwealth in the hands of a deceitful and ambitious Katrina Steiner-Davion, herself looking to become the next First Lord of the Star League. Even without a realm, however, Prince Victor remained a political force to be reckoned with. At the Second Star League Conference, Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht of ComStar announced his retirement and named Victor as his successor. The new Precentor Martial used his position to vote Coordinator Theodore Kurita into the post of First Lord.
CIVIL WARS
Despite their best attempts, the Lords of the Great Houses could not put aside their most basic of instincts. Using his position as First Lord to validate his actions, Sun-Tzu Liao launched a war of aggression aimed at reclaiming the St. Ives Compact, the nation that his aunt had split from the Capellan Confederation following the Fourth Succession War. Before the Second Star League Conference even took place, Sun-Tzu had involved troops from every nation in the Inner Sphere in support of his own goals. When First Lord Kurita ended Star League support for his war, Sun-Tzu drafted two Periphery realms - the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat - into a Trinity Alliance that allowed him to swallow his aunt's realm whole in June of 3063. In exchange for the blood of their young men and women, the leaders of the two Periphery nations gained precious recognition within the Star League and access to technologies that the Successor States had long held secret.
At the same time, the presence of the Nova Cats and the stresses of reabsorbing Jaguar-held worlds in the Draconis Combine have breathed new life into moribund reactionary movements opposed to the Coordinator and his liberalization of Combine society. Emboldened by their Coordinator's apparent lack of vision and the resurgence of traditionalism within the Combine, the so-called Black Dragon Society sponsored a number of audacious moves designed to force their leader's actions. A raid on the Lyran world of Skye ignited the fury of the late Ryan Steiner's people, who retaliated by attacking Combine troops in the Lyons Thumb - a region belonging to the Lyran Alliance but garrisoned by Combine troops under the banner of Star League peacekeepers. In response, Theodore Kurita annexed the worlds in August of 3062, punishing the Lyrans and playing right into the hands of the Black Dragons.
The Black Dragons then took the next step, but went too far. Under their command, the four regiments of the Combine's Alshain Avengers went rogue in October of 3062 and attacked their former homeworld deep within the Ghost Bear Dominion. Unfortunately, Alshain was also the Clan's adopted capital. Instead of rallying the shouts of the Combine's people behind their masters' causes, the Avengers only awakened the sleeping Bear. Aroused, the Bears crushed the Avengers in a single sweep of their claws and began their own punitive war against the Combine, one that lasted for more than a year, bringing war to dozens of worlds and killing countless young warriors on both sides. As befitting the two cultures, however, the war ended in December of 3063 with an honor duel - one that the Combine lost but that concluded the conflict.
While the Bears punished the Draconis Combine, Khan Vlad Ward convinced Hell's Horses Kahn Malavai Fletcher to take advantage of their long-time ally. Determined to carve a fiefdom of his own from the Ghost Bear Dominion - and in doing so secure for himself greater prestige among Kerensky's children - Fletcher embarked on his own campaign against the Ghost Bears. Fletcher did not succeed, however. Instead of taking worlds from the Dominion, the Bears forced them from the three worlds that Khan Ward's Wolves had granted them and send them running back to Clan Space, disgraced.
By far, the events of the decade were overshadowed by the disintegration of Katherine Steiner-Davion's grasp over the nations she had stolen from her brother. While the former Archon-Prince had at his command the military might of ComStar, he refused to inflict the pain and suffering of a long and bloody civil war upon his people, even as evidence mounted regarding his sister's involvement in the murder of their mother. Fate, as it turned out, would make the decision for him.
For every day that Katrina remained on the throne on New Avalon, she lost a bit more of her grip over the people of both the Federated Commonwealth and her Lyran Alliance. Her heavy-handed measures to keep order only caused more resentment for her rule among the common people, while her military commanders became more and more divided in their loyalties. In August of 3062, tempers briefly flared on Solaris VII when a scheduled bout between two favored MechWarrior champions - one of Lyran heritage and the other of FedSuns' - turned into a massive riot between fans and other MechWarriors on both sides.
Though optimists hoped for the best when a ceasefire calmed the fighting on the planet, it was only a matter of time before tempers between those who supported Katrina and those who opposed her rule flared. The inevitable finally came in November when fighting broke out in the Federated Commonwealth's Capellan March. This time there was no cease-fire, no going back. It wasn't until Arthur Steiner-Davion, youngest brother of Victor and Katrina, was killed in a bomb blast that Victor Steiner-Davion finally succumbed to fate. On 8 December 3062 he officially called upon the people of the Federated Commonwealth and the Lyran Alliance to rise up and topple her dictatorial regime.
What followed was five years of the bloodiest fighting the Inner Sphere had seen since General Kerensky led the Star League armies against Stephan Amaris. From the coreward reaches of the Lyran Alliance, where he had been inspecting ComStar troops, Victor stepped down from his dual command of the Com Guards and the Star League Defense Force and organized an army of patriots to oust the tyrannical regime his sister had forged in both nations. Soldiers and citizens from not only the Lyran Alliance and the Federated Commonwealth, but from the entire Inner Sphere, flocked to his side.
War erupted in all regions of the two nations as Victor fought his way down the length of the Lyran Alliance and into the Federated Commonwealth. Though suffering defeats and personal hardships - including the assassination of his lover, Omi Kurita, on orders from Katrina - Victor finally made his way to New Avalon in November of 3066, spending the next five months fighting the last vestiges of his sister's loyalists. At the same time Morgan Kell and Khan Phelan Kell landed on Tharkad with Peter Steiner-Davion to face the Katrina loyalists under the command of Nondi Steiner, Victor and Katrina's maternal great-aunt and sister to their grandmother, Katrina.
The armies arrayed behind the former Archon-Prince carried the day and removed Katrina from power, but only at a horrible price. Countless millions had died during the carnage of the previous five years and the armies of the Lyran Alliance and the rechristened Federated Suns were a mere shadow of what they once were.
For his part, Victor Steiner-Davion did not assume the throne he had fought so long and hard to take our of his sister's hands. Acquiescing to fate, he instead handed the reigns of leadership to his two remaining siblings: Yvonne on New Avalon and Peter on Tharkad. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the two leaders now have their work cut out for them. Not only do they need to somehow convince their people to move onward, but they must also contend with the aftermath of invasions into their nations - the Jade Falcons with their campaign in 3064-65 against the Alliance, the renewed Skye Rebellion of 3065-66, the Combine attacks into the Federated Suns in 3065-66 and finally the presence of Capellan troops on Suns' worlds today. Only with the help of regional lords like Dukes George Hasek and Robert Kelswa-Steiner will they be able to hold their realms together.
The nations of the former Federated Commonwealth were certainly not the only ones to suffer during their Civil War. Coordinator Theodore Kurita lost not only his daughter, Omi, but also his wife while war racked his two closest neighbors. While the elevation of his son, Minoru, to the post of Clan Nova Cat Loremaster can bring him some comfort, the Dragon is not the man he used to be and his subordinates have been forced to compensate.
After all of his victories in the past decade, Sun-Tzu Liao is now coming to realize just how precarious a position he and his nation are in. Having expelled Isis Marik from the Confederation, Liao has lost the support and friendship of Thomas Marik and his Free Worlds League in a time when strong alliances may be the only thing to prevent utter annihilation. Even Marik's nation may be in dire straits - with the Word of Blake's recent militarization drive, the peaceful League may explode into war at any minute.
The Star League Conference again approaches in this time of unease and unrest. Only time will tell whether the new First Lord will be able to once and for all put aside personal interest and settle the differences between the nations of the Inner Sphere.
For now, the Inner Sphere is poised precariously between peace and war. At any moment the balance of power may shift, setting BattleMechs on the march and worlds ablaze.
Writing Credits:
Michael A. Stackpole, Diane Piron-Gelman
and Christoffer "Bones" Trossen
In 2102, the scientific community paid new attention to pan-dimensional gravitational mathematics, a breakthrough discovery made eighty years earlier by Kearny and Fuchida. Though twenty-first-century scientists had scoffed at this theory, twenty-second-century physicists used Kearny and Fuchida's work to develop the first faster-than-light ship in an intensive research effort known as the Deimos Project. Deimos produced the first Kearny-Fuchida drive, which created a space warp around a starship through which the craft could "jump" distances of up to thirty light years from its starting point. On 5 December 2108, Terra launched the first so-called JumpShip, the TAS Pathfinder, on its famous round trip between Terra and the Tau Ceti system.
The ability to travel between star systems in the blink of an eye led to an unparalleled expansion of human colonies to other worlds. The first human colony of New Earth, established on Tau Ceti IV in 2116, paved the way for hundreds of others. Under the banner of the Terran Alliance, man spread throughout the galaxy as his ancestors had once swarmed over Terra. By the year 2235, an Alliance survey had counted more than six hundred human colonies that had scattered across a sphere roughly eighty light years in diameter.
In a parallel to earlier human history, however, this colonial expansion carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. Self-sufficient colonies far from their founding worlds began agitating for home rule; in 2236, a group of worlds at the edge of human-explored space declared independence from Terra. The Colonial Marines, dispatched from Earth to quell the rebellion, failed miserably. Within six years, the Alliance government had granted independence to all colonies that lay more than thirty light years from Terra.
RISE OF THE HEGEMONY
Over the next several decades, a combination of political infighting and the severe economic strain of supporting Terran colonies ate away at the fabric of the Terran Alliance. Tales of colonists starving to death sparked riots among sympathetic Terrans, while the ranks of the poor, dispossessed and angry grew. In 2314, civilian riots and political polarization erupted into Alliance-wide civil war. The Alliance Global Militia, which had remained uneasily neutral throughout the long years of unrest, stepped in to stop the violence at the behest of James McKenna, an admiral in the Alliance Global Navy. Using his newfound authority as the Alliance's military savior, McKenna tore down the corrupt Alliance government and established the Terran Hegemony in its place. In 2316, a grateful public elected him the Hegemony's first Director-General.
During McKenna's twenty-three-year term of office, he launched three military campaigns to bring independent colony worlds back under Hegemony control. The first two campaigns, though hard-fought, were largely successful; the third, launched in 2335, was not. The aging McKenna left control of the final campaign to his son Konrad, whose persistent refusal to follow standard procedure eventually ended in disaster for the Hegemony Navy. In 2338 Konrad led his naval convoys blindly into the heavily mined Syrma system, losing all but two of his twenty-nine troopships. This failure also gave heart to the worlds opposing the Hegemony, who had begun to ally with each other in order to protect themselves from the expanding Hegemony influence. Konrad's disgrace left the Hegemony without an heir to fill McKenna's place; upon James McKenna's death in 2339, the Hegemony's High Council passed the leadership of the Hegemony to James McKenna's third cousin, Michael Cameron. The new Director-General immediately began efforts to cement good relations with the allied colony worlds that had by this time formed independent nations.
In 2351, Michael Cameron took an action, the cultural repercussions of which would echo for centuries. He created the Peer List, establishing the equivalent of feudal nobility whose members owed their exalted rank to their achievements. Among the first to receive a title was Dr. Gregory Atlas, lauded for his work on refining myomer bundles. These incredibly powerful synthetic muscles were an integral part of early WorkMechs; when powered by a fusion reactor, myomer bundles give a BattleMech its strength and mobility. Though Dr. Atlas would not live to see the first BattleMech - used in action on 5 February 2439 - his work ultimately changed the face of war.
Inevitably, Cameron's Peer List led to the creation of feudal ruling families in the various independent states surrounding the Hegemony. In the latter half of the twenty-fourth and early twenty-fifth centuries, tensions between these fiefdoms escalated into open war. Humanity's interstellar nations fought battle after battle against each other, each more savage than the last, culminating in the unspeakable massacre of civilians on the world of Tintavel in the Capellan Confederation. The Confederation's leader, Chancellor Aleisha Liao, responded to the tragedy by devising the Ares Conventions - a set of rules for warfare intended to keep such atrocities from ever happening again. On 13 June 2412, the Hegemony and all other nations signed the Ares Conventions, agreeing to limit their use of nuclear weapons and cease assaulting civilian targets. Though hailed as an act of peace, the Ares Conventions in effect made war legal. Many of the signatory states wasted little time in abusing their legal right to wage warfare.
THE STAR LEAGUE ERA
The Hegemony engaged in its share of battles over the next century or so, but equally as often served as a neutral mediator between warring parties. Despite the Hegemony's history of military expansion, the presence of Terra at its heart gave it a certain credibility as a peacemaker in the eyes of other nations. Ian Cameron, who became Director-General in 2549, expanded the Hegemony's peacemaking role and negotiated an end to a number of conflicts. In 2556, Ian persuaded the leaders of the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation to sign the Treaty of Geneva; this famous document laid the groundwork for the formation of the Star League, the glorious interstellar alliance that ended wars and advanced the welfare of all humanity. The Lyran Commonwealth signed the treaty in 2558, the Federated Suns in 2567. With the inclusion of the Draconis Combine in 2569, Ian Cameron achieved his dream of uniting virtually all humanity under one ruler.
Led by the enlightened Cameron dynasty, the Star League gave its citizens peace and prosperity for two hundred years. Though even the Star League could not completely wipe out the human need for conflict, it kept disputes between its member-states under firm control. After Lord Simon Cameron's tragic death in 2751, the rulers of all the member-states served as regents for Simon's young son, Richard Cameron, but unfortunately abused their positions to jockey for personal power. The lonely Richard turned to Stefan Amaris, ruler of the Rim Worlds Republic in the far-off Periphery, for friendship and advice. Amaris hated the Camerons, and used his false friendship with Richard to destroy the Star League from within. On 27 December 2766, Stefan Amaris murdered Richard and took control of the Star League.
Within weeks of his coup d'etat, Amaris tried and failed to gain the support of General Aleksandr Kerensky, commander of the Star League Defense Forces. The honorable Kerensky despised the usurper Amaris and launched a bitter, thirteen-year war to liberate the Terran Hegemony from his grasp. On 29 September 2779, Kerensky led the assault against Amaris's final stronghold on Terra. In the face of overwhelming force, Amaris surrendered. By order of General Kerensky, Amaris, his family and his closest aides were summarily executed by SLDF troops for their crimes against humanity. This act of vengeance closed the book on the Star League.
In late 2780, the Council Lords stripped General Kerensky of his title as Protector of the Realm and ordered him to disperse all SLDF units to their peacetime locations. Bereft of central leadership, the member-states of the Star League vied with each other for power. They were unable to agree on which of them should become the new First Lord of the Star League, so the lords officially dissolved the High Council in August of 2781. Each lord then left Terra for home and began to build his own power base.
When the various lords attempted to persuade SLDF units to back their personal bids for power, General Kerensky took drastic action. On 14 February 2784, Kerensky proposed to his troops that the SLDF should leave the Inner Sphere and found a new society beyond known space, basing that society on the dearly held ideals of the Star League. In late November of 2784, Kerensky's Operation Exodus became a reality; more than 80 percent of the SLDF departed with Kerensky. The bewildered people of the Inner Sphere, mourning the loss of their hero, comforted themselves with the belief that Kerensky and his people would return when humanity needed them.
CENTURIES OF WAR
In the resulting power vacuum, the rulers of the realms now called the Successor States fought endless, brutal wars, each seeking to re-establish the Star League under his own leadership. In three hundred years of conflict, the Successor Lords accomplished little save to blast humankind virtually back to the Stone Age. By the time the third of the so-called Succession Wars ended, humanity had lost nearly every technological advance that the Star League had made possible; only stringent restrictions on destroying JumpShips, DropShips, BattleMechs and other irreplaceable technologies of war allowed interstellar combat to continue. As the Successor States battered each other senseless, the fighting ground down to endless border skirmishes in which no combatant gained significant advantage.
As the Inner Sphere warred, so did the descendants of the SLDF. Within two decades of planetfall, the men and women who had followed Kerensky in order to preserve the ideals of the Star League had betrayed those ideals and degenerated into vicious, fratricidal conflict. Determined to salvage something from the wreckage of his father's dream, Kerensky's son Nicholas led eight hundred loyal followers to a safe haven, where together they forged the society later known to history as the Clans. Though the Clans would not arrive in force in the Inner Sphere until 3049, they did send one unit as a vanguard in 3005 - Wolf's Dragoons. This famed mercenary unit fought for each of the Successor States in turn, testing the strength of their militaries. Ultimately, the Clan-born Dragoons would become one of the strongest units fighting against the Clans on the side of the Inner Sphere.
STEPS TOWARD PEACE
By the turn of the thirty-first century, common wisdom among Successor State militaries held that conquest of the Inner Sphere through conventional warfare was impossible. Those who wished to found a second Star League had to find another way. In 3020, Archon Katrina Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth sent a peace proposal to her fellow Successor Lords, but only Prince Hanse Davion of the Federated Suns showed any interest. In 3022, the Archon and the Prince concluded a secret alliance that would bind their realms together through Hanse Davion's marriage to Katrina's daughter and heir, Melissa Steiner. This union joined two families and two nations into a single strong realm, combining the prosperous Lyran Commonwealth with the militarily powerful Federated Suns. The union of these states put the Draconis Combine in an uncomfortable position between two of its greatest enemies, and led the smaller Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League to fear conquest by the emerging Federated Commonwealth.
After months of secret negotiations between the Capellan Confederation, Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League, all three of those nations signed the Concord of Kapetyn in 3024. Intended as a counter to the Lyran Commonwealth - Federated Suns alignment, this triple alliance provided for mutual support and defense. It also guaranteed that any renewed war would engulf the entire Inner Sphere.
FOURTH SUCCESSION WAR
On 20 August 3028, Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner held their wedding on Terra in the presence of their fellow Successor Lords. At the reception following the wedding, Hanse Davion offered a gift to his bride. As he fed Melissa a piece of wedding cake, Prince Hanse announced, "Wife, in honor of our marriage, in addition to this morsel I give you a vast prize. My love, I give you the Capellan Confederation!" With those words, Hanse Davion launched the Fourth Succession War.
In a series of military exercises held between 3026 and 3028, Hanse Davion had discovered that he could move vast numbers of troops swiftly to distant battlefields. He had also reorganized his army, regrouping battalions and regiments into Regimental Combat Teams consisting of one or more regiments of BattleMechs plus armor, infantry and artillery support. This organization gave Davion troops overwhelming advantages in numbers. The RCTs poured into the Capellan Confederation in seven successive waves, cutting it in half.
Such large-scale mobilization by the Federated Suns did not come without cost. The vast demand for JumpShips and DropShips to ferry troops across space reduced commerce between worlds to essential items only, inflicting economic hardship on many planets. In addition, the Holy Order of ComStar, whose members had preserved the technology of interstellar communications ever since the fall of the Star League, opposed Hanse Davion's war and placed the Federated Suns under Interdiction. ComStar's hyperpulse generators would relay no messages to, from or between any Federated Suns worlds. Hampered by the Interdiction and pleased with his conquests, Hanse Davion sued for peace in 3029. The battered Capellan Confederation agreed willingly to the Federated Suns' terms, desperate to free its scant military resources for use against other enemies. The Free Worlds League had exploited the Confederation's weakened state, taking more than a few worlds for itself; the Confederation's leadership could no longer afford war with House Davion if it hoped to preserve the nation.
SKIRMISHES AND PLOTS
Between 3029 and 3039, the Successor States jockeyed for power through covert dealings and small skirmishes in lieu of outright war. The Federated Commonwealth completed the integration of its militaries, governments, economies and conquered worlds, forming the largest and most powerful realm in the Inner Sphere. Meanwhile, the Draconis Combine took one lesson from the Fourth Succession War to heart, and overhauled its military in response to Hanse Davion's "lightning war."
In his role as the Combine's Gunji-no-Kanrei, or Deputy of Military Affairs, Theodore Kurita took several steps to ensure his nation's safety. He revamped the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery, upgrading their training and loosening the command structure to reward personal initiative. In his most controversial act, Theodore signed a compact with ComStar, granting independence to several Combine worlds in exchange for ComStar's Star League-era BattleMechs. As a result, on 13 March 3034, the Free Rasalhague Republic announced its independence from the Draconis Combine.
The declaration of independence touched off a minor rebellion within the Combine, as reactionary commanders refused to pull their military units from the new republic. Theodore declared the reactionaries ronin, lordless, and sent his own units to drive them from Free Rasalhague. Theodore's troops and various mercenary groups joined the Republic's Kungsärmé in battle against the ronin, but poor contracts negotiated in haste with the mercenaries paid most too much money for too little fighting. Free Rasalhague won the freedom it had claimed, but its citizens learned to loathe the mercenary MechWarrior.
In April of 3039, Hanse Davion set in motion the second great wave of his war to unite the Inner Sphere. Selecting the Draconis Combine as his target, he launched a two-front attack on the Dieron district. The first assault wave succeeded brilliantly; Davion's military advisors believed they had taken the Combine by surprise. Before Federated Commonwealth forces could launch their second wave, however, the Combine counterattacked and threw the Commonwealth on the defensive. Aided by the Star League 'Mechs he had received from ComStar, Theodore Kurita gambled with the fate of his nation and won. By attacking in the teeth of the Davion onslaught, Theodore made Hanse Davion believe the DCMS stronger than it actually was. Hanse Davion saw no reason to grind his troops down against soldiers armed with superior Star League-era technology, and by October of 3039, Davion chose to cut his losses and make peace.
The War of 3039 accomplished little for those who fought it, save to remind the Successor States of the severe cost of war. A few worlds changed hands, but the balance of power remained the same. Aside from an assault in 3041, in which the Tenth Lyran Guards took the world of Skondia from the Combine, the states of the Inner Sphere seemed content to rebuild their realms in peace. Military readiness and overcharged rhetoric still ruled the day, but the Successor States had - at least temporarily - grown tired of war. The Inner Sphere rebuilt during ten years of peace, which ended abruptly on 13 August 3049.
ENEMIES FROM BEYOND
In that year, while hunting pirates in the Periphery near the Free Rasalhague Republic, a detachment of the famed Kell Hounds mercenary unit met and succumbed to a mysterious fighting force on a planet known as The Rock. Casualties included Phelan Kell, only son of the Hounds' founder Morgan Kell and cousin to Victor Steiner-Davion, Hanse and Melissa's eldest son. Phelan was listed as missing and presumed dead, but the Inner Sphere did not learn his true fate until several months later. The Kell Hounds' defeat marked the first of many battles lost to the Clans, mighty warriors descended from the long-vanished Star League Army. The Clans invaded the Inner Sphere in order to conquer it and restore their version of the Star League.
In March of 3050, the Clans struck in force, hammering the Draconis Combine, the Free Rasalhague Republic and the Lyran side of the Federated Commonwealth. Wave after wave of Clan attacks followed, executed with blinding speed and ruthless efficiency. Using their technologically superior OmniMechs and tenacious armored infantry known as Elementals, Clan warriors cut down their Inner Sphere opponents like wheat before a scythe. Four Clans rolled across the Inner Sphere in the first wave: Clans Smoke Jaguar, Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon and Wolf. All took their share of planets, but Clan Wolf conquered more worlds than all its compatriots. Inner Sphere forces launched a few successful counterattacks, but those strikes came too little and too late. The Clan juggernaut thundered on, halted only when catastrophe struck.
On 31 October 3050, a Rasalhagian pilot named Tyra Miraborg crashed her Shilone fighter into the Clan flagship Dire Wolf, killing the Clans' war leader. The death of the ilKhan accomplished what six months of desperate fighting had not; the Clans ended their assaults, garrisoned the worlds they had conquered and pulled much of their military strength out of the Inner Sphere. For several months, later dubbed the Year of Peace, the leaders of each Clan debated the question of who should be the new ilKhan. In mid-3051, they chose Khan Ulric Kerensky of Clan Wolf to lead a renewed assault against the Inner Sphere.
In this year of peace, Colonel Jaime Wolf of Wolf's Dragoons summoned the leaders of the Successor States to the world of Outreach. There, Wolf revealed that he and his fellow Dragoons were actually Clan warriors - and that they were prepared to aid the Inner Sphere against their own people. The Inner Sphere leaders spent the better part of that year formulating a combined response to the overwhelming Clan threat. Setting aside centuries' worth of mistrust between their two nations, Hanse Davion and Theodore Kurita sealed a non-aggression pact. Davion also extorted material aid from the Free Worlds League by promising its leader, Thomas Marik, that he would devote all the resources of the New Avalon Institute of Science toward curing Thomas's son, Joshua, of leukemia.
In November of 3051, the Clans renewed their invasion of the Inner Sphere. In January 3052, Clans Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat attacked the Combine capital of Luthien. In an act of unexpected political courage that sealed the loose alliance between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine, Hanse Davion sent the Kell Hounds and Wolf's Dragoons to help defend his age-old enemy's homeworld. The trust engendered between the two nations by Davion's action enabled both to devote all their efforts to fighting the Clans.
Despite the close cooperation between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine, the Inner Sphere's unity remained largely an illusion. ComStar had negotiated with the Clans soon after the initial invasion, and upon their return to the Inner Sphere the Order offered to administrate the Clans' conquered worlds. ComStar's leader, Primus Myndo Waterly, intended to use the Clan conquest to bring about the collapse of civilization; ComStar would then step in as humanity's savior, gaining power over all of human-occupied space.
When Waterly discovered that the Clans intended to conquer Terra, ComStar's homeworld and the cradle of humanity, she abruptly changed her tactics. At the urging of her Precentor Martial, Anastasius Focht, Waterly struck a deal with the invaders and sent the Com Guards to fight the Clans on the backwater world of Tukayyid. If the Clans won, ComStar would give them Terra. If they lost, the Clans would halt their advance toward Terra for fifteen years. Unknown to the Precentor Martial, Waterly also set secret plans in motion to strike at the Clans and the Inner Sphere simultaneously.
The Com Guards defeated the Clans on Tukayyid in May of 3052, in a horrific blood bath that cost ComStar's forces dearly. While the Com Guards fought and died on Tukayyid to save the Inner Sphere, Primus Waterly gave the word to her agents. They launched Operation Scorpion, making a series of covert attacks on worlds in the Clan occupation zones and striking at communications sites across the Inner Sphere. By this bold gambit, Waterly hoped to cripple both the Inner Sphere and the Clans in the same blow, enabling her ComStar loyalists to seize power. The strikes failed; upon Focht's return to Terra, he deposed Primus Waterly and began a massive reform of ComStar.
VICTORY AND CHANGE
The end of the Clan invasion brought other changes in its wake. Hanse Davion died of a massive heart attack at the end of the war; Chancellor Romano Liao of the Capellan Confederation died at the hands of an assassin, leaving her son Sun-Tzu on the Celestial Throne. Sun-Tzu immediately began to build a power base, allying himself to House Marik through an engagement to Thomas Marik's illegitimate daughter, Isis. Within a few short years, Theodore Kurita succeeded his father Takashi as Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. Ryan Steiner, perennial thorn in the side of the Federated Commonwealth's rulers, began agitating for an independent Isle of Skye. ComStar, meanwhile, split into two factions over Precentor Focht's reforms. The reactionary group, calling itself Word of Blake, emigrated to the Free Worlds League planet of Gibson with Thomas Marik's blessing.
On 19 June 3055, a bomb blast at a charity event on Tharkad killed the Federated Commonwealth's beloved Archon, Melissa Steiner. Authorities failed to apprehend a suspect. Ryan Steiner, riding the crest of anti-Davion sentiment he had spent years creating, accused Archon Prince Victor Steiner-Davion of engineering Melissa's death in order to ascend her throne. Ryan's native Isle of Skye, already seething with secessionist fever, erupted in open rebellion. Victor's sister, Katrina, tried to mediate between her brother and the rebel faction with little success.
In April of 3056, Victor's aide and Katrina's lover, Galen Cox, fell victim to a bombing attack in a Solaris hotel that narrowly missed Katrina. Four days later, an unknown assassin shot Ryan Steiner dead. Suspicion centered on Ryan's aide, but many people suspected that Victor ordered Ryan's death to silence his allegations about the death of Archon Melissa. In an effort to defuse the hostilities in the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth, Victor declared the Lyran world of Tharkad and the Davion world of New Avalon co-capitals. He then shifted his government to New Avalon and left Tharkad in Katrina's hands, naming his sister as his official regent. This move, coupled with Ryan's death, quelled the rebellion - but the brief peace could not last.
Victor arrived on New Avalon only to be faced with the disturbing news that Joshua Marik was dying of leukemia despite the best efforts of the NAIS to save him. Knowing that his realm still desperately needed war materiel that only the Free Worlds League could provide, Victor could not afford to lose the only hold he had over Captain-General Thomas Marik. Victor replaced the dying child with a substitute. Marik, however, had his suspicions. He soon learned that the Joshua Marik on New Avalon was not his son, but a duplicate. To retaliate for the death of his son, Marik sent troops into the Commonwealth's Sarna March.
A horrified Katrina publicly denounced Victor for his deception, recalled all Lyran troops to her half of the Federated Commonwealth, severed relations with her brother's realm and announced the formation of a neutral Lyran Alliance. In conjunction with Marik's invasion, Sun-Tzu Liao sent Capellan troops into the Sarna March to reconquer worlds his grandfather had lost during the Fourth Succession War. Aided by Katrina's neutrality and united by their hatred for House Davion, Marik and Liao prosecuted their war against the Federated Commonwealth with surprising speed and success.
As the threat of a wider war between the nations of the Inner Sphere loomed, political infighting between the Clans intensified. The Clans had long been divided into two camps: the Crusaders, who sought to restore the Star League to the Inner Sphere through conquest, and the Wardens, who believed their responsibility lay in safeguarding the Inner Sphere until the Great Houses reestablished the Star League on their own. Many of the Clans, especially Clan Jade Falcon, chafed beneath the truce that ilKhan Kerensky had signed and gladly seized any excuse to break it.
Opposition to the Truce of Tukayyid soon erupted into a Clan-style civil war between Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolf, known as the Refusal War. Led by Phelan Kell, who had risen among his Clan captors to become Khan Phelan Ward of Clan Wolf, a significant portion of Clan Wolf's warriors fled to the safe haven of the Kell Hounds' homeworld, Arc-Royal. The rest of Clan Wolf fought a losing battle against the Jade Falcons.
Both conflicts ended suddenly and swiftly, in a surprising series of twists. Having taken back from Victor Davion the worlds that had once belonged to the Free Worlds League, Thomas Marik concluded a peace treaty with the Archon Prince. Sun-Tzu Liao, unwilling to continue his own campaign in the absence of Marik's backing, grudgingly agreed to end hostilities. The Kell Hounds, having refused Katrina Steiner's demand for aid in defending the Lyran Alliance against Capellan aggression, established an anti-Clan defensive zone centered on Arc-Royal. By this act, the mercenary unit carved its own fiefdom out of Katrina's realm. In the oddest turn of events, the Wolves who had battled the Jade Falcons were Absorbed by that Clan, then won freedom from their Jade Falcon conquerors, lead by Khan Vlad Ward.
THE UNIVERSE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
The first five years after Tukayyid, tumultuous though they were, seemed positively tranquil compared to the explosive events of 3058 - 3061. Those years saw many of the certainties by which Clan and Inner Sphere alike had lived violently overturned, giving way to a new order fraught with possibilities and perils.
In the wake of the Sarna March invasion, the Word of Blake seized its chance to capture Terra, cradle of humanity and ComStar's stronghold. Troop movements from the Free Worlds League into the so-called Chaos March provided cover for the Word of Blake Militia to move several divisions within striking distance of humanity's homeworld, and the high demand for mercenary troops in that same region of space did the rest. Brion's Legion, a mercenary unit that had constituted nearly half the strength of ComStar's Terran Defense Force since the Fourth Succession War, abruptly ended its ComStar contract in favor of a higher-paying Chaos March assignment. Unwilling to relocate Com Guard forces from the Clan border, ComStar's Precentor Martial chose to replace Brion's Legion with another mercenary unit - the Twenty-first Centauri Lancers. The Lancers, however, never arrived on Terra. Instead, the Word of Blake sent its own troops, who masqueraded as the Lancers for long enough to move the rest of their forces into position.
In late February of 3058, the Word of Blake struck from the inside as well as on the battlefield. The Com Guards on Terra were taken by surprise and unable to use the planet's formidable defenses because of Blakist sabotage. They fought a bloody but ultimately losing battle across every Terran continent. By early March of 3058, the Word of Blake held Terra in an iron grip from which it has yet to be dislodged. Precentor Martial Focht of ComStar declined to attempt the reconquest of Terra as long as the Clans remained a greater threat to the Inner Sphere.
During those same months, Clan Jade Falcon drove deep into the Lyran Alliance and captured several planets until Inner Sphere forces stopped the Falcon advance on the world of Coventry. Conceived as a show of strength in the aftermath of the Refusal War, the Coventry campaign was to have far more ominous consequences for the Clans than the Falcon commanders could have anticipated. On Coventry, the Falcons were deprived of victory by two events: strikes by Khan Vlad Ward's Wolves at worlds in the Jade Falcon occupation zone, and the arrival of a coalition force from across the Inner Sphere, led by Prince Victor Steiner-Davion of the Federated Commonwealth.
The Inner Sphere and Jade Falcon armies were evenly matched; neither side could win Coventry without a protracted and bloody battle, and both commanders realized it. Prince Victor invoked the Clan rite of safcon to ensure a safe landing for his troops, and then offered Falcon Khan Marthe Pryde the only honorable way out - hegira, the traditional right of a defeated enemy to leave the field with his forces and honor intact. Under other circumstances, Pryde might have refused; with the Wolf Khan making clear his intent to attack her Clan's holdings, however, she could not afford to leave those worlds defended by mere garrison troops. She accepted hegira and the Jade Falcons left Coventry without another shot being fired.
THE STAR LEAGUE REBORN
In October of 3058, the leaders of the various Inner Sphere powers gathered on the Lyran capital of Tharkad to accomplish peacefully what they had failed to achieve during centuries of war - the rebirth of the Star League. Despite the deep divisions that remained among them, fueled by the legions of dead soldiers and civilians from all sides, the rulers of the Inner Sphere agreed to join together for a single purpose - to end the Clan threat, once and for all. To prove themselves a force to be reckoned with, the new Star League chose to destroy a single Clan: the Smoke Jaguars. Initially, the Star League intended only to drive the Jaguars out of their occupation zone. Information from a Clan traitor, however, enabled them to strike at Clan Smoke Jaguar's homeworld as well.
In 3059 and 3060, Clan Smoke Jaguar died at the hands of the combined armies of the Inner Sphere. Their occupation zone overrun, their homeworld in ruins and their warrior caste decimated, the Jaguars essentially ceased to exist. The Inner Sphere force then turned its attention toward the rest of the Clans. Lacking the might to defeat the entire Clan military, Prince Victor Steiner-Davion led his forces to Strana Mechty, the heart of Clan space and Clan culture. There, they defeated the Crusader Clans in a hard-fought Trial of Refusal. The Crusaders' defeat ended the invasion in a way none of its proponents could have envisioned. Far from taking Terra and rebuilding the Star League in the Clans' image, the Crusader Clans found themselves locked into their Inner Sphere occupation zones or driven from the Inner Sphere entirely.
Clan Nova Cat, which had sided with the Inner Sphere in obedience to the mystic visions of its leaders, was given its own fiefdom in the Draconis Combine. For what their fellow Clans termed treason, the Nova Cats were Abjured and their holdings in Clan space found forfeit. Clan Ghost Bear, which chose not to fight in the Trial for a cause it no longer believed in, also became a permanent presence in the Inner Sphere, claiming the majority of the Free Rasalhague Republic as their Dominion.
Clan Steel Viper suffered the most humiliating fate of all the Invading Clans, next to the shattered Smoke Jaguars. Thinking to take advantage of Jade Falcon weakness in the aftermath of the Refusal War, the Vipers challenged Falcon dominance of the two Clans' shared occupation zone. They failed, and left the Inner Sphere rather than be destroyed by their Falcon antagonists.
As the man who ended the most fearsome threat the Inner Sphere had ever known, Victor Steiner-Davion should have been the hero of the hour. In the eyes of many, he was - but his own people were not among them. The Prince had left his youngest sister, Yvonne Steiner-Davion, as regent on New Avalon in his absence. He returned to the Inner Sphere to find Yvonne deposed and the Federated Commonwealth in the hands of a deceitful and ambitious Katrina Steiner-Davion, herself looking to become the next First Lord of the Star League. Even without a realm, however, Prince Victor remained a political force to be reckoned with. At the Second Star League Conference, Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht of ComStar announced his retirement and named Victor as his successor. The new Precentor Martial used his position to vote Coordinator Theodore Kurita into the post of First Lord.
CIVIL WARS
Despite their best attempts, the Lords of the Great Houses could not put aside their most basic of instincts. Using his position as First Lord to validate his actions, Sun-Tzu Liao launched a war of aggression aimed at reclaiming the St. Ives Compact, the nation that his aunt had split from the Capellan Confederation following the Fourth Succession War. Before the Second Star League Conference even took place, Sun-Tzu had involved troops from every nation in the Inner Sphere in support of his own goals. When First Lord Kurita ended Star League support for his war, Sun-Tzu drafted two Periphery realms - the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat - into a Trinity Alliance that allowed him to swallow his aunt's realm whole in June of 3063. In exchange for the blood of their young men and women, the leaders of the two Periphery nations gained precious recognition within the Star League and access to technologies that the Successor States had long held secret.
At the same time, the presence of the Nova Cats and the stresses of reabsorbing Jaguar-held worlds in the Draconis Combine have breathed new life into moribund reactionary movements opposed to the Coordinator and his liberalization of Combine society. Emboldened by their Coordinator's apparent lack of vision and the resurgence of traditionalism within the Combine, the so-called Black Dragon Society sponsored a number of audacious moves designed to force their leader's actions. A raid on the Lyran world of Skye ignited the fury of the late Ryan Steiner's people, who retaliated by attacking Combine troops in the Lyons Thumb - a region belonging to the Lyran Alliance but garrisoned by Combine troops under the banner of Star League peacekeepers. In response, Theodore Kurita annexed the worlds in August of 3062, punishing the Lyrans and playing right into the hands of the Black Dragons.
The Black Dragons then took the next step, but went too far. Under their command, the four regiments of the Combine's Alshain Avengers went rogue in October of 3062 and attacked their former homeworld deep within the Ghost Bear Dominion. Unfortunately, Alshain was also the Clan's adopted capital. Instead of rallying the shouts of the Combine's people behind their masters' causes, the Avengers only awakened the sleeping Bear. Aroused, the Bears crushed the Avengers in a single sweep of their claws and began their own punitive war against the Combine, one that lasted for more than a year, bringing war to dozens of worlds and killing countless young warriors on both sides. As befitting the two cultures, however, the war ended in December of 3063 with an honor duel - one that the Combine lost but that concluded the conflict.
While the Bears punished the Draconis Combine, Khan Vlad Ward convinced Hell's Horses Kahn Malavai Fletcher to take advantage of their long-time ally. Determined to carve a fiefdom of his own from the Ghost Bear Dominion - and in doing so secure for himself greater prestige among Kerensky's children - Fletcher embarked on his own campaign against the Ghost Bears. Fletcher did not succeed, however. Instead of taking worlds from the Dominion, the Bears forced them from the three worlds that Khan Ward's Wolves had granted them and send them running back to Clan Space, disgraced.
By far, the events of the decade were overshadowed by the disintegration of Katherine Steiner-Davion's grasp over the nations she had stolen from her brother. While the former Archon-Prince had at his command the military might of ComStar, he refused to inflict the pain and suffering of a long and bloody civil war upon his people, even as evidence mounted regarding his sister's involvement in the murder of their mother. Fate, as it turned out, would make the decision for him.
For every day that Katrina remained on the throne on New Avalon, she lost a bit more of her grip over the people of both the Federated Commonwealth and her Lyran Alliance. Her heavy-handed measures to keep order only caused more resentment for her rule among the common people, while her military commanders became more and more divided in their loyalties. In August of 3062, tempers briefly flared on Solaris VII when a scheduled bout between two favored MechWarrior champions - one of Lyran heritage and the other of FedSuns' - turned into a massive riot between fans and other MechWarriors on both sides.
Though optimists hoped for the best when a ceasefire calmed the fighting on the planet, it was only a matter of time before tempers between those who supported Katrina and those who opposed her rule flared. The inevitable finally came in November when fighting broke out in the Federated Commonwealth's Capellan March. This time there was no cease-fire, no going back. It wasn't until Arthur Steiner-Davion, youngest brother of Victor and Katrina, was killed in a bomb blast that Victor Steiner-Davion finally succumbed to fate. On 8 December 3062 he officially called upon the people of the Federated Commonwealth and the Lyran Alliance to rise up and topple her dictatorial regime.
What followed was five years of the bloodiest fighting the Inner Sphere had seen since General Kerensky led the Star League armies against Stephan Amaris. From the coreward reaches of the Lyran Alliance, where he had been inspecting ComStar troops, Victor stepped down from his dual command of the Com Guards and the Star League Defense Force and organized an army of patriots to oust the tyrannical regime his sister had forged in both nations. Soldiers and citizens from not only the Lyran Alliance and the Federated Commonwealth, but from the entire Inner Sphere, flocked to his side.
War erupted in all regions of the two nations as Victor fought his way down the length of the Lyran Alliance and into the Federated Commonwealth. Though suffering defeats and personal hardships - including the assassination of his lover, Omi Kurita, on orders from Katrina - Victor finally made his way to New Avalon in November of 3066, spending the next five months fighting the last vestiges of his sister's loyalists. At the same time Morgan Kell and Khan Phelan Kell landed on Tharkad with Peter Steiner-Davion to face the Katrina loyalists under the command of Nondi Steiner, Victor and Katrina's maternal great-aunt and sister to their grandmother, Katrina.
The armies arrayed behind the former Archon-Prince carried the day and removed Katrina from power, but only at a horrible price. Countless millions had died during the carnage of the previous five years and the armies of the Lyran Alliance and the rechristened Federated Suns were a mere shadow of what they once were.
For his part, Victor Steiner-Davion did not assume the throne he had fought so long and hard to take our of his sister's hands. Acquiescing to fate, he instead handed the reigns of leadership to his two remaining siblings: Yvonne on New Avalon and Peter on Tharkad. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the two leaders now have their work cut out for them. Not only do they need to somehow convince their people to move onward, but they must also contend with the aftermath of invasions into their nations - the Jade Falcons with their campaign in 3064-65 against the Alliance, the renewed Skye Rebellion of 3065-66, the Combine attacks into the Federated Suns in 3065-66 and finally the presence of Capellan troops on Suns' worlds today. Only with the help of regional lords like Dukes George Hasek and Robert Kelswa-Steiner will they be able to hold their realms together.
The nations of the former Federated Commonwealth were certainly not the only ones to suffer during their Civil War. Coordinator Theodore Kurita lost not only his daughter, Omi, but also his wife while war racked his two closest neighbors. While the elevation of his son, Minoru, to the post of Clan Nova Cat Loremaster can bring him some comfort, the Dragon is not the man he used to be and his subordinates have been forced to compensate.
After all of his victories in the past decade, Sun-Tzu Liao is now coming to realize just how precarious a position he and his nation are in. Having expelled Isis Marik from the Confederation, Liao has lost the support and friendship of Thomas Marik and his Free Worlds League in a time when strong alliances may be the only thing to prevent utter annihilation. Even Marik's nation may be in dire straits - with the Word of Blake's recent militarization drive, the peaceful League may explode into war at any minute.
The Star League Conference again approaches in this time of unease and unrest. Only time will tell whether the new First Lord will be able to once and for all put aside personal interest and settle the differences between the nations of the Inner Sphere.
For now, the Inner Sphere is poised precariously between peace and war. At any moment the balance of power may shift, setting BattleMechs on the march and worlds ablaze.
Writing Credits:
Michael A. Stackpole, Diane Piron-Gelman
and Christoffer "Bones" Trossen
