It's odd, though, that membership in a star-spanning political entity is defined primarily by race. <snip> Capellan worlds are just a ethnically diverse as those of other states, with Poles, Spaniards, Malaysians, Russians, and Scots mixed in with Han Chinese and a pile of other ethnic groups.
Vitios asks Quintus to translate the “Capellan” phrase into English, rather than into “Davion”. Likewise, when the Lyrans speak German or Italian, they call it German or Italian, not “Lyran.”
<snip>
the interchangeable association of “Capellan” with “Chinese” suggests that there was an equivalent of Urizen II Kurita in the Confederation, who introduced and popularized Chinese language and culture into the otherwise ethnically diverse Capellan zone. One also wonders exactly when House Liao embraced its heritage.
One of the things that continues to bug me especially about the older publications is the cheerful ignorance of the Japanese language and muddled Orientalism. (The Japanese Combine's academies have Chinese names, while Chinese-culture Warrior House soldiers are described as carrying Japanese katanas).
The Sword of Light names are Japanese-sounding, but definitely not Japanese. The only one that's recognizable as a name is Toshiba, the rest are meaningless collections of syllables.
If "Capellan" is a dialect of Chinese (presumably centered on Capella or Liao), does that imply there's a "New Cantonese" dialect centered on New Canton? If the "Capellan" language were impressed on the whole Confederation from the top down, rather than growing organically from the bottom up, I imagine it would've been implemented by the Sundermann Liaos along with other compulsory elements of Confederation life. The centralized government and thorough indoctrination probably accounts for some of the Confederation's seeming homogeny.
The Capellan zone
is ethnically diverse, and the carpetbagging Capellan Marchers are also ethnically diverse, but the fact that they're both diverse doesn't mean that any given ethnicity would be equally common in both places.
To be fair, I don't think Stackpole does much with the ethnic diversity of
any of the Successor States.
Being as unfamiliar with Japanese as I am, I would've assumed "Torinaga" was meant to be Toranaga. Are the other names - Ikia, Noshia, Katuzi Noritoga, Shotugama or Utsonomiya - also plausible as mispellings? I'd generally prefer to read translation errors as a mistake by the author rather than something that's present in-universe, but
the notion that Lord Kurita's subjects are really bad at Japanese is a funny and fitting one.
(I would've thought "House Chris" would be an injoke... maybe some anime character? Or C.R. Green, who contributed to the House Marik, Liao and Davion books, and was an editorial assistant on those and DS&JS and the
The Galtor Campaign?)
Based on the amount of time between the NewsNet headlines, it appears that Herras has the ability to get off Galatea, reach a target world, do the mission, and return in about 8-12 days, on average. This still wreaks havoc with standard jump times, but is far more within the realm of possibility if you assume that Herras Ragen is quite wealthy and has invested a vast amount of resources to set up a commercial command circuit from Galatea to worlds within a few jumps, and is paying extra for captains able to make pirate point calculations.
If this Dark Wing is associated with the Matabushi covert ops division from the Activision MechWarrior game, then these uprisings may be associated with Operation INROAD.
And my head a'splode. Simon Johnson's top secret briefing, in which he mentions that only a handful of people know about the secret marriage clause, and charges Andrew Redburn with delivering Melissa to New Avalon under conditions of utmost secrecy...has just been broadcast in the open on NewsNet.
I expect Galatea would be a traffic hub for that region of space. If Club Zero Zero were at one of Galatea's jump points (I realize that's unlikely), and if Herras owned a high-G shuttle just big enough to carry his 'Mech (which would explain why he doesn't travel with any other MechWarriors), then he might be able to do missions within two jumps just by hitching along with normal traffic. Alternatively, we could take the rapid turnaround as an abstraction of having multiple missions on the same world, in the same star system, or strung out along an out-and-back jump route.
The Dark Wing members seem to be operating on or about Galatea, and presumably have been for the last decade. Perhaps that makes it less surprising that one or more of Herras' Galatean acquaintances (whether paid or unpaid) would know of them.
Connecting the mercenary uprisings with Matabushi's Operation INROAD is neat, and suggests the other mercenary events are associated too- the cache of stolen goods could be one of Matabushi's vaults or something the Dark Wing hid when they went to ground, and the "mercenary infighting" could be part of the falling out between members of Dark Wing or maybe between the old Dark Wing and Matabushi.
In light of the mission to make contact with and assist MIIO's Solaris VII branch, I like your earlier suggestion that Cearle is Herras' MIIO handler. I doubt ComStar is involved; they shouldn't know any more about Simon Johnson's secret briefing than anyone else does. That news item could just as well have been fabricated as a ploy by SAFE, perhaps in response to discovering a tap on their Galatean agent's communications.
You're probably right about Yerg Gantor using Roden to aim Herras at the other members of Dark Wing. (How's this for a lark: Agent Lana Mann and Tasha are the same person, originally employed by Yerg Gantor to sabotage agent Kearny's operation against Matabushi, and now using Herras to tie up loose ends.)
Got to hand it to the authors of TM, then. That is an elegant solution to the issue. Most artwork shows aerodynes using the primary drive exclusively, though that could generally be ascribed to combat maneuvers.
Circa 3025, the Free Worlds League has 12 Aerospace Fleets consisting of 3-6 JumpShips and 10-15 DropShips each, with integral aerospace fighter complements. I would presume the Lyrans, being more powerful, would have more - perhaps 15-20 fleets of comparable size.
The
Monarch entry in DS&JS talks about the belly drive too, but it doesn't call the transit drives "secondary" and the atmospheric manuevering drive "primary. ;)
Staying with DS&JS a moment, you
mentioned a while ago that DS&JS and the SLSB give different dates for the
Mammoth and
Behemoth; the easy solution is that Krester's yards aren't known to have survived the war with Amaris. The
Behemoth's 2782 date associates it with the SLDF Exodus, so Kerensky may have shared the design with House shipyards. My theory for the
Mammoth is that Ceres Metals resurrected it in Capellan space, and then lost a couple shipyards to Davion and Marik encroachment.
Per the '87 House book, the FWL retains a reputation as the Inner Sphere's "gateway to the stars," so I'd expect the Lyrans to have less naval power than the FWL. I like your idea that the Combine would have 25 fleets - I would guess 2-4 JumpShips each.
"after all, there was no current state of war between Luthien and Tharkad." So, did Takashi acknowledge Katrina Steiner as First Lord when nobody was looking? Or has the Third Succession War been officially declared "done" by Autumn 3026, placing this local conflict firmly in the mayfly-duration interbellum period between the Third and Fourth Succession Wars?
Technically, I don't think the "Third" Succession War lasts to 3025; I think the original idea was that it ended long ago, and the people of the Inner Sphere simply stopped bothering to number the conflicts which followed. The latest interbellum (referring to major pushes, not regimental cattle raiding) would have have started with the signing of the FedCom Accords and the Kapteyn Accords in 3020-3022.