Date: October 4, 3028
Location: Terra
Title: The Star League (Part 2)
Author: Boy F. Petersen, Jr.
Type: Sourcebook
-Sociopolitical Structure: The First Lord was the commander in chief of the SLDF, controlled the flow of currency, and controlled access to Star League-developed technologies. The Lords of the six member states spent May-June and September-October on Terra, receiving reports and discussing policies. Periphery representatives were only invited to attend sessions dealing with Periphery-related issues. The Star League government included the Department of Administration, Department of Social Relations, Department of Economic Relations, Department of Revenue, Department of Education and Information, and Department of the Attorney General.
-Star League Defense Forces: This section reports that, at its peak, the SLDF had nearly 100 million soldiers in 15,000 regiments, and an equal number of JumpShips, DropShips, and WarShips. It profiles Commanders Shandra Noruff-Cameron, Dangmar Lee, Nicholas Kinnol, Killian Squarn-Turk, David Peterson, Ikolor Fredasa, Rebecca Fedladral, and Aleksandr Kerensky. It details recruiting tactics at thousands of centers across the Inner Sphere, and briefly profiles the War Academy of Mars, the Military Academy of Aphros, Sandhurst, the Combat College of New Earth, Flight Academy of Graham, Fleet School of Keid, University of Proserpina, Saint Cyr, Frunze, Malinovsky BattleMech and Tank Academy, Naval Academy (Japan), West Point, and Annapolis.
The section also lists major Star League producers of ‘Mechs, fighters, WarShips, and armor, and describes the general profile of a “standard” SLDF Base, from small forts and supply depots up to Castles Brian and secret bases, and lists various Armies, Corps, Divisions, etc. in the SLDF TO&E, and profiles the Martial Olympiad.
-Socioeconomics: This section argues that the creation of the Star League was actually motivated by a desire to gain advantageous trade deals to source raw materials, which had become depleted in the Hegemony, forcing Hegemony manufacturers to compete on the basis of superior quality, rather than high volume production and lower prices. Hegemony firms such as Ceres Metals, Di Tron Heavy Industries, Ulsop Robotics, Dukempic Foods, Mitchell Vehicles Interstellar, QUO Medical Technologies, Holden Planetary Engineers, the Nirasaki Computers Collective, Krester’s Ship Construction, and New Earth Trading Company are profiled.
-Society: The people of the Hegemony venerated the Terran-based religions and rejected new faiths from external colonies. The treasures and temples of the major religions were sacked during the Amaris coup, and their replacements lack the grandeur of the originals. The educational system gave most citizens 14 years of formal education. The Golden Ten universities are profiled, including: University of Thorin, Caph Institute of Technology, Universities of Puget Sound States, Academies of Keid, University of Mars, New Earth University, James McKenna University, College of Talitha, University of Lambrecht, and Addicks University. Artists were revered, and easily found wealthy patrons to bankroll their living expenses while they created cutting edge artwork. There was some class conflict, such as between urban and rural (with rural types looking down on urbanites), and between civilians and military, or spacers and planet-dwellers, but it generally didn’t extend beyond snubs.
-Atlas of the Terran Hegemony: The Atlas profiles Bryant, Caph, Carver V, Dieron, Graham IV, Helen, Keid, Mars, Murchison, New Earth, Nusakan, Oliver, Ozawa, Sabik, Sirius, Terra, Venus, and Zebebelgenubi. The general format is to describe what made it special during the Hegemony period, what the Amaris occupation forces did to damage or destroy it, and what’s left today.
Notes: This was written before the various Greek designators were defined in the ComStar sourcebook, but looking at that table, Nonda was in Intelligence (non-ROM), Merle was Public Relations, and George was Research. Oddly, none of the researchers are Tau, which is “Historian/Archivist.” Given the fact that the Roman numerals indicate time-in-grade, George was either a late addition to the team in 3027, or he was assisting them while still an Acolyte. (Another coffee run to JavaPulse Generator?! Blessed Blake!!!) They appear to have served as coordinators and editors, since they credit the work of 250 historians, researchers, writers, and editors. (By comparison, the Periphery research team had thousands of ROM agents feeding it information, and the Liao book team only took three years for their report). One of the researchers, R. R. Andrews, is shown in 3024 posing in his vintage SLDF dress uniform, a crown, and, incongruously, a poster of Miss Ningpo signed “To the Taurian Velites, I Love You Guys!”
As much as any other early author, Boy F. Petersen Jr. defined the BattleTech universe. He was part of the writing team on House Kurita, House Davion, the Mercenary’s Handbook, the 20 Year Update, Clan Jade Falcon, and Clan Wolf, and did the entire House Steiner, Star League, and NAIS Atlas of the 4th Succession War books on his own. He also wrote elements of Technical Readout 3025, Technical Readout 3050, Technical Readout 2750, and the Fourth Succession War scenario pack, and did several products for FASA’s Renegade Legion, Star Trek, and Shadowrun lines. With so many of these coming out in the 1987-1989 timeframe, he must have spent those years utterly immersed in creating the universe’s lore and writing his fingers to the bone. Searches on Google turn up just game sourcebooks under that name – leading to some speculation in various forums that Boy F. Peterson (sometimes written Petersen) Jr. is a pen name.
-History: The USSR split into seven new states. The Democratic Republic of European Russia is Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and bordering regions of Russia. The People’s Union of Kazakh is Kazakhstan. The Islamic Republic of Turkmen is Turkmenistan. The Soviet Socialist Republic is probably Western Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the surrounding regions). The Democracy of Yakut is in central Siberia, around Yakutsk, and may extend through western Siberia. The Magadan Socialist Republic is on the Pacific Coast of Siberia. That leaves the “Confederation of Free Orient Peoples.” That’s likely to be southern Siberia, on the Mongolian and Chinese border. This split doesn’t identify where Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, or Chechnya might have ended up. Dagestan and Chechnya might have gone into the Islamic Republic of Turkmen, as might Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan, but given real-world tensions between the Central Asian states, it’s hard to see them being willing to cede control to a regime based in Turkmenistan (where the leader once had a massive rotating gold statue of himself in the center of the capital). The truly amazing bit about the formation of the Western Alliance is that North and South Korea reunified around 2021 into a bloc aligned with China, and that the whole Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere joined the Western Alliance en-masse in 2024.
Given the description of the Liberals as having adopted Expansionist tactics, that indicates they resorted to using force. Being a minority opposition party, it’s doubtful that they could order the Alliance Global Militia to attack Expansionist-aligned countries directly. My strong suspicion is that they covertly financed terrorist groups, like Elias Liao’s New World Disciples, to strike at Expansionist politicians.
The section describing McKenna’s naval tactics during his campaigns of persuasion notes that the Hegemony navy had some technological shortcomings – they had space superiority fighters, but those couldn’t function in an atmosphere (like the Starfury from Babylon-5), and their atmospheric fighters couldn’t go into space. We still have rules for creating conventional atmospheric fighters, but the space-only fighters have never seen the light of day. It’s also mentioned that this lack of a flexible Aerospace Fighter left the DropShips unprotected during atmospheric entry, during which they suffered heavy losses from atmospheric fighter attacks. The first modern DropShip didn’t enter service until 2496, so these early 2300s “DropShips” must have been just converted cargo shuttles.
From the description of the Thorizer in the “Military Oddities of the HAF” section, it sounds very much like an early WiGE, though it’s shown as a hovercraft/fightercraft hybrid (sort of a Land-Air-Vehicle) in TRO: Boondoggles instead.
The sidebar on joint-ownership of worlds indicates that the Hegemony government feared running out of raw materials, and entered into agreements for “shared world” status with other states – using advanced terraforming to transform marginal worlds for mutual benefit. Scarcity of raw materials is a common theme in the BattleTech universe. This implies either that the great houses are incredibly inefficient at harvesting the resources of their asteroid belts and other planetary bodies, or are, instead, incredibly efficient, having stripped entire systems bare of accessible minerals within two centuries of occupation? Leading to the question – what did they do with all those resources, which would have caused the inhabited planets to which they were shipped to grow significantly more massive? The Kurita sourcebooks description of “deep core mining” to hollow out entire worlds would seem to argue in favor of the “incredibly efficient” theory, but that still doesn’t answer the question of where all this stuff went after being manufactured.
The section on the Ares Conventions notes that “only two of the Periphery realms would sign the accords. For the other two, the Age of War would be business as usual.” This statement ignores the fact that the Magistracy of Canopus and the Outworlds Alliance hadn’t yet been founded when the Ares Conventions were formed. When a later author realized this, it was reconned to indicate that the “ten nations” invited included the Principality of Rasalhague (which signed) and the United Hindu Collective (which abstained).
Unity City has been identified as being on the western side of Puget Sound, a bit northwest of the modern town of Gorst. From Wikipedia, Gorst is described as “an unincorporated community at the head of Sinclair Inlet in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. Gorst, located on the shores of Puget Sound, is primarily a town consisting of stores, auto dealerships, espresso stands, and the county's only strip club (now closed). Population 524.” Still, given the state of Unity City circa 3028 (burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp), Gorst still has a leg up on it in 2016.
A small throwaway line in the section on the formation of the SLDF is that Ian Cameron negotiated the right to recruit common citizens for SLDF military service. To me, this implies that during the Age of War, with so few outlets for conflict, and the allure of piloting a BattleMech, most militaries of the Great Houses restricted military service to a privileged noble class. Commoners might be allowed to become cannon fodder infantry or to work in the rear with the gear, but most of the Great Houses probably required anyone wanting a field command to have substantial familial political clout, and a long history of loyal service. (Or, in the Lyran sector, just gobs of money would do.)
The editors note the difference between accounts of the Santiago Massacre in the Kurita, Periphery, and Star League books, which differ significantly in major details. For the true story, you need to go to Kevin Killiany’s “What I Remember Most”
There’s an oddity in the section on the Malagrotta Crisis. When five Taurian WarShips misjumped into the Malagrotta system, the miners on the moon of Fontana “issued several distress calls to the Federated Suns.” Since there had been an agreement that “neither state would establish a military presence in the system,” how did the miners send a distress call to a FedSuns fleet base in another system…decades before the invention of HPGs? (I suppose the best way would have been a radio message to a FedSuns ship at one of the jump points, which then would have jumped out to go for help, but as written, it seems like the author forgot about the lack of interstellar communications during the Reunification War.
I was just watching Firefly last night, and the parallels between the Taurian/SLDF conflict and the Central/Independent fight are vivid. Heck, the Taurians are the original browncoats.
The explanation that the RWR couldn’t have taken part in Operation PROMETHEUS because the Star League sourcebook says that “The Rim Worlders had few ‘Mechs or MechWarriors,” that doesn’t necessarily track. The RWR clearly did have its own ‘Mech factories – one was the center for a labor strike prior to the RRA anti-Amaris revolt. I would think that House Amaris would have made sure its prestigious BattleMech units were the most loyal, meaning that the Amaris Loyalist forces would have had most of the RWR’s BattleMechs, while the rebel Provisional Rim Republic forces would have had mostly conventional vehicles.
The description of the SDS development makes a couple of references to the 1980s. The description of the Terran SDS as the “Reagan”-class system is a shout out to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which envisioned a nuclear deterrent system involving both space-based and ground-based interceptors that could intercept and destroy large numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles, giving the side that deployed it the potential to launch an un-answerable first strike in a nuclear war, thereby neutralizing the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. (Side note – I grew up in Los Alamos, NM in the 1970s and 1980s, and a lot of SDI money flowed there for various projects. Once we went out to see the arrival of a generator the size of a barn that was going to be used to try to develop a surface-to-orbit laser, but the cold war ended before the project got very far.) The M-5 drone was named “Caspar,” which (from what I’ve read on various boards over the years) is often interpreted as a reference to “Casper the Friendly Ghost” by people who don’t recall that the Secretary of Defense in charge of SDI development was Caspar Weinberger.
Once Catalyst sourcebooks came out with full descriptions of the drone SDS equipment, the question was raised as to what, exactly, was the egg-shaped thingy bristling with weapons and featuring a large viewscreen showing the words “HALT,” featured on p. 61, since it had been visually superseded by the new art in Liberation of Terra. Various answers were suggested, the most plausible being that it was either a warning buoy to alert ships they were entering controlled space, or a political cartoon from the era, not intended to be a realistic depiction of the actual hardware. The “HALT” display would certainly seem to argue for the latter, given how close you’d have to be to read the message, and given that radio communications would be far more reasonable.
Jonathan Cameron’s letters ultimately revealed that he had dreams showing “Terra scarred and mutilated,” “foreign flags on Earth’s soil,” “Terra dimmed and no longer the bright beacon of the Human race.” He was also tormented by insomnia, anxiety attacks, and mild epileptic seizures (during which he had his visions). Prophetic visions are a minor, but recurring element of BattleTech fiction. A common thread among them is that they seem to be linked to specific bloodlines (implying a genetic component), and only manifest after interstellar travel is discovered (none of the pre-KF sidebars or sourcebook entries mention any prophecies). Rituals (like the Nova Cats’ and Coyotes’) designed to evoke meaningful visions routinely fail, implying that the ritual itself isn’t involved. My personal theory is that certain individuals with the right genetic makeup can, after exposure to hyperspace travel, experience prophetic dreams. We know that a subset of humans is negatively affected by K/F drive travel, getting nausea and other symptoms of “jump sickness.” Why some, and not others? Genetics, most likely. Thus, if K-F affects people differently and demonstrably generates nausea, why not have the ability to impart prophetic visions on an even smaller subset? The sidebar on “Declining Tourism” noted that, for no discernable reason, interstellar tourism dropped off by 50% between 2744 and 2745, leading some sociologists to postulate that “people could sense the impending collapse of the Star League.” People wealthy enough to engage in interstellar tourism are likely to be heavy users of K-F travel. Perhaps with such major events in the offing, large numbers of people were able to sense something – not a full prophetic vision – but some sort of predictive sense of impending doom that put them off planning trips. The Cult of the Saints Cameron has anecdotal accounts that, if true, further argue that prophetic visions are possible in the BattleTech universe, albeit through an as yet unexplained mechanism. The Nova Cats’ beliefs may be dismissed by others as superstition, but the game mechanics for stock Nova Cat characters give them Sixth Sense as a package trait, implying that there’s something there for real.
Kerensky’s actions during the regency period indicate a complete inability to delegate, and a very limited pool of talent at the upper echelons of the SLDF. When Rebecca Fetladral retired, she told the Council Aleksandr Kerenky was the only person qualified to become the next SLDF leader. If that wasn’t just hyperbole, that raises questions about why there weren’t multiple qualified candidates to do the job. Why weren’t more senior commanders being groomed for the role? If Kerensky had dropped dead of a heart attack, who would have led? Kerensky seems to have spent a large amount of time on inspections and reforms as Commanding General, but when appointed as Regent, for some reason felt it was important to continue his inspections of fortifications and SDS systems. His reforms and streamlining of the SLDF command structure meant that there weren’t enough people to do all the bureaucratic tasks of running the military. To keep from having to pay for a few dozen extra salaries, Kerensky ended up “signing entire stacks of unread documents.” Clearly, Kerensky did not take his job as Regent seriously – or he would have secured at least an administrative staff to review all the Council documents, give him concise summaries, and keep tabs on Council activities. As Regent, he had the authority to have BLSA staff assigned to him for this purpose, but it was more important to make sure everything was spit spot at SDS missile battery XLF73345-Alpha Ten. This tendency to assume full responsibility for military operations and to fail to groom successors or delegate authority was also one of the causal factors that caused the Star League-in-Exile to shatter upon his death, with no clearly designated successor. (Nicholas undercutting him with his own schemes certainly didn’t help, but Aleksandr was definitely focused on military operations and efficiency at the expense of significantly more important duties to Richard, the League, and his family in Moscow.)
Going back to the Anastasia Marcus’ claim that Kerensky ordered the extermination of every individual named Amaris in the Rim Worlds Republic, the “Team Maximus” researchers mention no such atrocity, noting that the execution of 100 POWs at Gutui Junction was the worst incident of the occupation of the Rim Worlds. In 2779, after seeing the carnage in the Throne Room, where the bodies of House Cameron still lay, Kerensky ordered the immediate execution of Amaris, his family, and his aides. There is no indication, however, that he got on the HPG and ordered SLDF garrison forces in the RWR to kill all of Amaris’ family there as well.
I think the reason Gunthar “Vampire” Von Strang was left out of the Liberation of Terra Historical is that the authors used the Star League sourcebook as their primary source, and its page on the North America battles doesn’t mention Von Strang. His nefarious deeds were spelled out in the Jade Falcon sourcebook, and I can understand them not having recalled it as a source. The Star League sourcebook just lists New York as a “secondary invasion site” to pin down Amaris’ reserves and keep them away from the fighting around Unity City.
Team Maximus’ ten years of research failed to uncover any hint of Kerensky’s secret family, since it notes “[Historians] have maintained that Kerensky realized his age and lack of heirs meant an overthrow would only have delayed the inevitable.” As we’ve seen in “The Shot Heard Around the Sphere,” had he stayed, things would have turned out quite differently and the Succession Wars would not have taken place.
The closing sidebar on the aftermath section notes that five missions to find the Exodus fleet failed, losing the trail 100 light years past Gutara V. It mentions that people have speculated on SLDF ties to the Minnesota Tribe, Clinton’s Cutthroats, Wolf’s Dragoons, the Vandenberg White Wings, and the Disappearing Battleship of Merope. The thing is, this report was, I believe, commissioned by the First Circuit for the purposes of educating new Acolytes. If ComStar is well aware that the White Wings were ComGuard forces, that the Disappearing Battleship of Merope was “disappeared” by ComStar (by the White Wings themselves), and if the ComStar cabal had ties to the Minnesota Tribe and/or Clinton’s Cutthroats, why would these have been presented as “mysteries”? If they assumed there might be a chance for this document to leak to Inner Sphere intelligence agencies, it would have been perhaps better not to mention those at all. Many of the Acolytes reading this will go on to gain security clearances within ComStar, and will learn the truth. All this does is prime them to distrust the crew down in Archives.
