The BattleTech Universe
Notes recorded by Anastasius Focht,
ComStar Precentor Martial, 3058
How do you measure centuries of war?
Do you count bodies, or empty ammunition shells? Can you quantify the screams of the dying in decibels? How many reservoirs would you need to hold the blood of men, women, and children alike?
For myself, the best measurement is the squandering of our own precious resources. So much has been devoted to the spilling of blood, so little to improving the lives of the survivors. My children’s generation will lead lives less prosperous than those of their ancestors fifteen generations past.
The beginning of the end began with the colonization of deep space. The young states of the Inner Sphere—a collection of worlds centered around Terra, the birthplace of man—scrapped with and clawed at each other to secure rocks for colonization. Then, the armies of war numbered in the millions, and humanity clamored for a way to kill itself more efficiently.
Salvation came with the rise of the BattleMechs at the dawn of the 25th century. These ten-meter humanoid tanks crashed through the ranks of infantry, unloading lethal weapons faster than any artillery. An entire battalion of soldiers could be replaced by one pilot in a walking war machine.
As these colossi strode the battlefield like Titans from the dawn of time, the Inner Sphere wearied of war. They formed the Star League—an alliance of five Great Houses who surrendered rights of rulership to a single First Lord who had a standing army. For two centuries, peace and progress reigned over the Inner Sphere.
But just as Cronus, leader of the Titans, was betrayed, so was the Star League. The years of prosperity ended with an assassin’s strike. In 2766, Richard Cameron, the young First Lord of the Star League, was murdered by a pretender to the throne, Stefan Amaris. This traitorous devil seized control of the Star League in a vicious palace coup. Hannah Boman, a poet of the era, wrote about the tragedy that “The stars reflect but dimly/In the blood of a broken peace.”
But Amaris had not considered the will of the commander of the Star League Defense Forces, General Aleksandr Kerensky. Refusing to follow a murderer, Kerensky locked his forces into battle with Amaris. At the cost of billions of lives, the usurper was put down, but the Star League had been mortally wounded. Kerensky foresaw the League’s descent into civil war and rather than be a tool of that conflict he chose to withdraw entirely.
In the largest exodus into the Periphery to date, Kerensky’s war machine left the Star League to its own ruin. The Star League lords, crazed with ambition and greed, seized the opportunity to cut each others’ throats, and in so doing, destroyed themselves.
In war after war, the Houses of the Inner Sphere sacrificed their youth upon the altar of greed. Far from making the Inner Sphere stronger, strife between Houses cost the Inner Sphere irreplaceable technology and generations of leaders. For almost 300 years, the guns were rarely quiet.
And then, in 3050, on a cold barren rock in the Periphery, everything changed. The descendants of Kerensky and his soldiers came roaring back to retake the Inner Sphere. They no longer called themselves battalions and divisions . Now they were called the Clans. They cloaked themselves with the names of fierce animals: Ghost Bear, Smoke Jaguar, Jade Falcon, Wolf. And they had everything the Inner Sphere had lost—technology, training, and unity of purpose.
Or so it seemed. In truth, the Clans were divided almost as bitterly as their Inner Sphere cousins. Some, like Clan Smoke Jaguar, were brutal aggressors. Others, like Clan Wolf, looked for a craftier solution than war. Nonetheless, all the Clans fought with fierce determination and success.
They might have won the war outright in their first foray if not for a brave sacrifice that nearly cost me my life. A young pilot, Tyra Miraborg, crashed her crippled Shilone aerofighter into the bridge of the Clan flagship, killing the leader of the Clans. Her valiant sacrifice was the bravest I have ever witnessed, and tears fall from my eyes even now as I think of her. I stood on the deck of that flagship, watched her action with agony, watched with awe the cream of the Clan leadership being sucked into the void.
After Miraborg, the Clans halted their invasion to select a new leader—a process which gave us a full year of breathing space.
During this unexpected cease-fire, the Inner Sphere hardened itself for war. And when the Clans returned, they found a more powerful and more unified opponent. The battles raged from planet to planet, until the Clans announced their ultimate target: Terra.
The cradle of humanity. My home.
Until this time, we of ComStar claimed neutrality in this war, even though few of us truly felt neutral. But now the Clans were threatening our planet of Terra. We could claim neutrality no longer. We met the Clans with ComStar’s fiercest forces, on the planet of Tukayyid. We lost many brave warriors in that engagement, but their deaths were not in vain. The battle went to us—the Inner Sphere.
So now we earned a brittle peace. For fifteen years, the Clans and the Inner Sphere have sworn to honor the truce of Tukayyid—fifteen years, so they say, but no one believes it will last that long. Certainly, I do not. The hunger for battle and destruction grows like a cancer inside humanity, in the hearts of Clan and House alike. Even I can feel it...the desire to crush the enemy who killed so many of our own. Brothers, sisters, mothers, sons. Our future dead on the battlefields of history.
Even now, House Kurita girds to retake the worlds it lost to the Smoke Jaguars, and House Steiner prepares to meet the Jade Falcons with no quarter given. Again, we are at war.
They say history is written by the victorious. Though some claim otherwise, I do not count myself among the victors. But I will write this history, in hopes that it outlives both the victorious and the defeated, and remains simply the truth.
