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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A TIME OF WAR
INTRODUCTION
PERPETUAL WAR
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INNER SPHERE
Rise of the Hegemony
The Star League Era
Centuries of War
Steps Towards Peace
Fourth Succession War
Skirmishes and Plots
Enemies From Beyond
The Warriors of Kerensky
Clan Invasion
Victory and Change
The Universe Turned Upside Down
The Star League Reborn
Civil Wars
FACTIONS
House Kurita (Draconis Combine)
House Davion (Federated Suns)
House Liao (Capellan Confederation)
House Marik (Free Worlds League)
House Steiner (Lyran Alliance)
Mercenaries
Other Powers
THE MECHWARRIOR
THE BATTLEMECH
Chassis
Locomotion/Movement Systems
Armor and Weapons
Power Systems
Defining Characteristics
Movement Capabilities
Heat Dissipation Systems and Strategies
TECHNICAL READOUT
INTRODUCTION
BattleMechs are the most powerful war machines ever
built. These huge, human-shaped vehicles are faster, more
maneuverable, better armored, and more heavily armed than
any other ground combat unit in history. Equipped with such
deadly weapons as particle projector cannons, lasers, rapid-fire
autocannons and missiles, these behemoths dominate the
battlefields of the 31st century.
BattleTech is a game that pits ’Mech against ’Mech on
the battlefields of the future. Each player controls several
BattleMechs, deciding how each ’Mech moves, when to fire its
weapons, and what targets to aim at. The outcome of the battle
is determined by the players’ decisions and the luck of the dice.
Combat is played out on a game board that represents the
battlefield, using stand-up counters to represent the mighty
BattleMechs that fight for supremacy over the Inner Sphere.
This book introduces players to the fascinating and stunning universe of BattleTech. A Time of War is a brief encapsulation of the BattleTech universe. With that, you’ll have a frame
of reference to jump right into the short story Perpetual War
that provides a taste for what BattleMech combat is like for the
men and women who populate this exciting universe. Next,
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere provides a glimpse of how
humankind has expanded to the stars in the last millennium,
while the Faction section details the major states in the universe and what it’s like to follow each banner, as well as a short
section detailing other powers as well. This is followed by The
MechWarrior section that explains a MechWarrior’s place in
this complex universe, as well as detailing how a he actually
pilots a ’Mech. The final section of this book, The BattleMech,
provides a general technical overview of the BattleMech and
describes the specific capabilities and weapons of the twentyfour BattleMechs contained in this box.
2
Table of Contents/Introduction
A TIME OF WAR
For almost a thousand years, humans have journeyed into
the far reaches of space, colonizing thousands of worlds and
forming star-spanning alliances. From these grew the five vast
star empires that make up the Inner Sphere. The Inner Sphere
was rife with division as the ruling dynasties warred constantly
over colony worlds with valuable resources. These titanic struggles led to the development of BattleMechs: gigantic, humanoid
battle machines bristling with lethal weapons. From the twenty-
fifth century onward, these walking tanks ruled the battlefields.
As the price of conflict grew, the Inner Sphere tired of war.
Eventually the five ruling Houses joined together in the Star
League, a federation led by a First Lord and served by its own
army. For nearly two hundred years, the Star League brought
the Inner Sphere peace and prosperity.
The sudden death of the Star League’s First Lord paved the
way for an evil genius named Stefan Amaris to stage a bloody
coup d’état. The Star League Defense Forces, commanded by
the brilliant General Aleksandr Kerensky, refused to accept
Amaris’s rule. They fought him in a bitter civil war—the largest
conflict ever fought by humanity, before or since. Kerensky’s
forces won, but at a terrible price. In the chaos that followed,
the Council Lords were each determined to step in as First Lord.
Despite the efforts of Kerensky to hold it together, the Star
League dissolved.
Unable to halt the conflict, Kerensky appealed to his soldiers to join him in leaving the Inner Sphere. Nearly 80 percent
of the Star League army heeded Kerensky’s call to build a new
Star League somewhere far beyond explored space. Kerensky
and his followers abandoned their homes and headed into
uncharted areas of the galaxy, presumably never to return.
War followed war in the wake of Kerensky’s dramatic
departure. For nearly three centuries, the Houses of the Inner
Sphere fought in vain for the right to rule. These Succession
Wars forged new alliances and cost the Inner Sphere lifetimes
worth of scientific advancement and irreplaceable technology.
Constantly maneuvering for position, the House Lords assumed
that the greatest enemy they would ever face was each other.
They were wrong.
While the Inner Sphere sank into barbarism, Kerensky’s followers built a new society in the harsh environs beyond known
space. They developed a rigid caste system based on eugenics
and martial ideals, designed to produce the ultimate warriors.
For nearly three hundred years, they were unified by one burning goal: that when the time was right, they would return home
and conquer the Inner Sphere. They planned to be the “saviors”
of humanity and to rebuild the Star League in their own image.
When the warlords of the clans decided the time had come
to launch their invasion, they took their powerful ’Mechs and
MechWarriors and drove straight toward Terra, the birthworld
of humanity.
Faced with a common enemy, the states of the Inner
Sphere united against the threat, establishing a new Star
League. Finally victorious in 3060, the Star League halted the
Clan invasion and a new era of peace seemed to loom on the
horizon. It was not to be, however, as war once again swept
through almost every House and Clan, with the most vicious
fighting centered around the civil war between House Davion
and House Steiner. Now, with the end of the FedCom Civil War,
a weary peace has settled across the Inner Sphere, but it is a
peace filled with tension.
This is but the eye of the storm.
A Time of War
3
PERPETUAL WAR
he two-meter wide metal claw swung down to drag
dual furrows through the parched soil, kicking up
plumes of dust that could be seen for klicks. The other
claw, attached to a five meter long reverse-canted leg,
T
4
swung forward to repeat the wound in the dirt in a lope
that ate up the ground at a over sixty klicks an hour. The dust
column behind was impressive, reaching almost a hundred
meters into the brightening dawn morning. There was nothing
to be done, though. Surprise was gone and speed was of the
essence. The raid had already begun.
“Captain, I’ve got the coordinates confirmed by a fly-over.”
The electronically reproduced voice of her XO still managed to
convey levity, a good humor that he carried like a shield.
“I copy, Joshua.” Unlike her XO, Captain Suzanne Lewis had
no need of such protection. Why hide when the pain simply
proved you were alive? Alive, exhilarated, terrified, joyous, filled
with glory at piloting sixty-five tons of lethal machinery: all of it
Perpetual War
brought an adrenaline high she could ride for days. Then again,
it felt like she had been riding it for weeks; eating and sleeping
it, just to survive.
“I guess I owe you that Timbiqui Dark when this is over,
Leftenant,” she said. Suzanne tried unsuccessfully to hide the
disgust in her tone at losing the bet.
“Sorry Cap, but you just shouldn’t bet against me on something like this. It was pretty elementary to determine where the
inbound DropShip was going to touch down by its trajectory as
it hit the atmosphere. Comparing the intensity of the drive-flair
with the known mass of the Union and correlating its velocity
with the full possible range of empty to fully laden with a company of twelve ’Mechs, only synched it. They grounded in sector
A23.”
“Yea, yea, I know. Honors in math, as well as electronics,
blah, blah.”
“Now you’re just being a sore loser.”
“That’s because I lose sorely. You’ve been with me long
enough to know that.”
A barking laugh was answer enough.
Clenching her jaw, she opened up a line to her entire
company. “Alright, people, Joshua landed it on the head, as
usual. We got bad guys grounding just a little too close to our
supposedly hidden supply depot and that’s simply too much of
a coincidence for me. I say they found out about it and they’re
coming to ruin our party. But I hate gatecrashers, so who ever
they are, we’re going to show them what Davion troops can do.
Then, when this is over, I’m going to have a conversation with
our friendly Intel man to discuss military intelligence issues.”
A good round of laughter erupted at that comment.
Nothing like the age-old oxymoron to lighten the mood.
ush through! They’re going to sack the depot if we
don’t push through,” Suzanne said, re-stating the
obvious in her frustration.
“Cap, they’ve got a good cross-fire going and
P
gorge,” Joshua said. “We could try to traverse it further down?”
She punched up her tactical maps and queued through
several until she found the appropriate one. After seeing the
distances involved, she quickly discarded the idea. It was almost
ten kilometers further south until there was a passable area
again; too long, way too long.
“That’s not going to work,” she said. “That’ll take too long.
The depot is their target and we’ve got to push through. Striker
Lance, I want you through that breach as quickly as possible.
The Command Lance will follow, providing cover fire. Now go.”
With a series of affirmatives echoing in her ears, her Striker Lance
leapt into the breach of the canyon opening. Jessie’s Grasshopper
waded into the blistering weapons fire that immediately answered
the move. Armor blasted off in chunks to rain down on the ravine
floor, but the Grasshopper trudged forward; for a moment, Suzanne
pictured a man leaning into the gale of a storm.
She pulled her targeting reticle across her forward view
screen, lining it up with the shots’ point of origin. Though the
angle was off, she hoped that laying down some fire in the general area would make the other MechWarrior duck and give her
Striker Lance the chance to close. She tightened her grip on the
right-hand joystick, sending thirty long-range missiles downrange. She couldn’t tell if the resulting series of explosions had
actually damaged the enemy ’Mech, but the weapons fire from
that quarter suddenly cut off.
As soon as her weapons could cycle through, she maneuvered to a better angle. The members of her Command Lance
began following the Striker Lance into the breach as she ripped
off another full salvo. Suzanne knew she was chewing through
her ammunition reserves fast, but if it kept any of her company
from harm’s way to the end of the canyon pass, she’d burn every
last round she had.
A warning siren of enemy fire blared, and a hard-rain of
metal washed across her ’Mech, blasting armor and almost
have managed to bottle the only pass across the
knocking her Catapult from its feet. She tried to get a bead on
where the attack had come from, but it wasn’t until her enemy
locator designated the target that she was able to spot it, high
up on the canyon wall. She smile grimly in admiration—the
Dervish pilot had managed to jump up to a small ledge, barely
wide enough for the ’Mech to stand on, and was returning missile fire in kind.
Before she could track her weapons up the wall, three coruscating beams of energy reached out to engulf the Dervish; one
melted armor off the right arm, but the other two cored right into
the right torso, the armor flashing instantly into a metallic vapor.
The Dervish slammed back into the wall, and suddenly fire and
death exploded out of the hole torn in the ’Mech’s torso. The top
of the Dervish’s head blew off as the pilot ejected; the PPC strike
to the right torso must have set off an ammunition explosion. As
the ’Mech tore itself inside out, it slowly toppled and fell down
the canyon wall, creating a huge landside.
As luck would have it, the mountain of debris was far
enough in front of her lead ’Mech that they were safe, but that
didn’t make her any happier. As the last rocks stopped moving,
she slammed her fist into her dashboard. She may not have lost
a ’Mech, but they had ten kilometers to go before they could
traverse this gorge and make it to the depot.
he cerulean beam of twisting energy slammed into the
ground at Suzanne’s feet, paving a steaming glass trench
in the dirt between her Catapult’s legs. Instinctively, she
stomped both feet down hard onto the pedals, igniting
T
her ’Mech’s jump jets and lofting into a ballistic arc that
would bring the machine slamming back to the ground in a
barely controlled fall, some one hundred-twenty meters closer
to her target. Her hand clenched convulsively on her righthand joystick, sending thirty long-range missiles on tails of fire
towards her elusive target. She knew her jump would throw the
targeting off, but it would keep the enemy MechWarrior’s head
down while she sought cover herself—cover that was hard to
find on this blighted prairie
“Incoming,” the voice exploded inside the confines of her
neurohelmet. “I repeat, we have an additional bogie coming
through the south section of the facility’s wall.”
“Six and nine, I want that bogie taken down. Now,” she
said, gritting her teeth for the impact to come. With a sound
like a hundred-hovercar pileup, the Catapult landed, its jump
jets pumping out superheated reaction mass in an effort to
bleed off velocity. With a perfectly flexed knee motion timed to
touch down, she didn’t even bite her tongue this time. A savage
smile lit her face, while a chorus of “yes, sirs,” answered her command.
Quickly checking her secondary screen, she could see
where the new threat had emerged. Luckily, this one was only
a Panther. A fusillade of laser fire washed across her ’Mech from
another quarter—looked like a Javelin out of the corner of her
eye—as she wondered what brought the warriors of House
Kurita to her door this time. Not that the snakes needed any
Perpetual War
5
particular reason to attack their ancient enemies, but…. Was it
just the supply depot, or were they simply spoiling for a good
fight? Well, she’d give them one.
Without warning, the enemy MechWarrior she’d been
targeting swung his machine away from the blasted buildings
of the supply depot and out into the open, pushing the ’Mech
into a full run. Harsh sunlight glinted off the jutting torso and
overly large shoulders, while the right arm ended in the barrel
of an autocannon. For a heavy ’Mech, the Dragon’s top speed
of eighty-six kilometers an hour made it a dangerous opponent when the right person piloted it. This Kurita MechWarrior
was obviously one of those people, as the ’Mech moved at an
oblique angle away from her while torso twisting to bring its
weapons to bear.
The autocannon spewed metal death at her, as a stream of
depleted uranium slugs shot out to embrace her Catapult. The
shock of the impact slammed her forward as her ’Mech tried
to fall. She could feel the whine of the Catapult’s gyroscope
through the soles of her boots, drawing on her own sense
of balance to keep the machine upright. A quick back pedal
helped bring the machine back under control, giving her a
chance to quickly assess the situation.
She glanced towards her damage schematic screen, seeing
immediately how much damage the shot had done. Striking
into her right torso, it had found the wound previously inflicted
by the Dervish and chewed most of the armor off; another hit
like that and she would be Dispossessed. She shuddered a
moment at the thought of losing her machine.
Again launching a brace of missiles, she sped her machine
at another angle to the Dragon, attempting to make herself
a more difficult target while keeping it at range; her own
weaponry was better suited for a long-range fire-fight. A quick
glance at the bottom of her view screen showed the Awesome,
Hunchback and Assassin of her command lance attempting
to maneuver into position. Of course the Assassin could have
quickly outdistanced her, but the Dragon would shred its
lightweight armor if it were on its own. Her plan was to force
the Dragon into the range of the Awesome’s weapons, where
its three particle projector cannons should make quick work of
even a heavy ’Mech.
The Dragon MechWarrior, however, was not so easily corralled. She was extremely proud of her command and their
battlefield prowess, but there was no doubt that she was completely outmatched by this pilot. Who is he, she thought, as the
last of her long-range missiles exploded harmlessly in the dirt
at the feet of the Dragon. Though the enemy ’Mech proudly
sported the logo of the Draconis Combine, no other unit mark-
ings marred any part of the surface.
“Striker Lance, I want you to move into a flanking position
for this Dragon. He comes down now!” She couldn’t help the
yell. To be so outmaneuvered by a snake was more than she
could stomach.
Suddenly the Dragon stopped, as though it was listening
to something, then swung directly toward her. Taken aback,
Suzanne brought her medium lasers on-line. The rest of her
Command Lance was finally able to concentrate all of their fire
on the machine. Like a wounded, angry bull, however, it continued to move forward as armor plating fell and inky-black smoke
began to pour from its wounds.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as the
right-arm of the machine was completely torn away, and yet it
still closed with her. Pushing the throttle backwards, she tried
to maneuver out of the path; it was too late. With its last dying
energy, the Dragon ran headlong into her Catapult.
The sound was like nothing she’d ever experienced before
and she was slammed forward at the impact, exploding stars
in front of her eyes. Her Catapult crashed to the ground with
the Dragon’s carcass on top. Her neurohelmet bounced heavily
back against her command couch, and darkness closed in.
he slight breeze ruffled her hair, greeting her return
to the land of the living. Suzanne re-adjusted the cold
compress on her head. She prayed the pounding in her
skull would lessen soon, as she took a deep drink from
T
the offered canteen and then slowly cleared her throat.
“Say that again.” Her words sounded more like a croak than
a human voice.
“It looks like our friendly snake here played us good,” her
XO said, squatting down so as not to force her to look up at
him. “He kept us busy long enough for the majority of his force
to retreat to their DropShip and lift off world.” He paused for a
moment, then continued. “He must have gotten a message that
they were within sight of the DropShip, so he felt it was time to
die a glorious death.”
She started to nod her head in agreement with her XO’s
sentiments, but stopped as a new round of pounding made her
groan. After a moment, she spoke again.
“I don’t get it. That was it? They strike, rummage through
the supply depot, take some spare ammunition they probably
could have gotten anywhere and then leave? Meanwhile they
lose several ’Mechs and one astonishing MechWarrior?” She
hated wording it that way, but there was no denying his ability;
they’d all fallen victim to it.
“Don’t know, Cap. Maybe there was something in the supply depot we didn’t know about and they did.”
She tried to think things through, but the pain was simply
too much; she’d yet to look at the damage her Catapult had
taken because she knew that that pain would be too much as
well.
Very carefully, she maneuvered to her feet. “I don’t know
either. But I do know one thing. They’ll be back. Whether for
something else our esteemed commander hasn’t informed us
about, or simply because they now think they can. They’ll come
again… but the ending will be very different.”
She removed the compress and looked her XO in the eyes,
finding the same gleam of resolution. Yes, she thought, the ending would be very different next time.
6
Perpetual War
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INNER SPHERE
he 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 begins with humanity’s longago first steps into space. Among the ancient nations
T
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 ear-
lier 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 scattered across a sphere roughly eighty light
years in diameter. In an eerie 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 indepen-
dence 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
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
7
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 the 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 war-
fare 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.
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 whose cul-
tural repercussions would echo for centuries. He created the
Peer List, establishing the equivalent of a 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 incred-
ibly 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.
8
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
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 all too briefly 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 mem-
ber-states under firm control. After
Lord Simon Cameron’s tragic death
in 2751, the rulers of all the memberstates served as regents for Simon’s
young son, Richard Cameron, but
unfortunately abused their posi-
tions 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, thir-
teen-year war to liberate the Terran
Hegemony from his grasp. On 29
September 2779, Kerensky led the
assault against Amaris’s final strong-
hold on Terra. In the face of over-
whelming 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. Unable to agree on which of them
should become the new First Lord of the Star League, 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 pos-
sible; 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 com-
batant 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 some-
thing from the wreckage of his father’s dream, Kerensky’s son
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
9
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 uncom-
fortable 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.
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
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 follow-
ing 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
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A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
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 Sun worlds. Hampered
by the Interdiction and pleased
with his conquests, Hanse Davion
sued for peace in 3029. The bat-
tered 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 he hoped to
preserve his 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 initia-
tive. 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. Also, Hanse Davion
saw no reason to grind his troops down against soldiers armed
with superior, Star League-era technology. 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
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
11
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 godforsaken 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, presumed
killed, 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 ruth-
less 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.
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A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
13
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,
thus 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
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A Brief History of the Inner Sphere
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