Kampfgruppe Steiner Operation: Götterdämmerung or how we survived the Dark Age.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

There's probably Tamarite and Skye populations around the Commonwealth descending from transplants or refugees.  Steiner could draw upon those populations while simultenously keeping a torch burning for those lost regions as Liao did for Chesterton.

[ANS Kamas P81]

So if-and-when the Fortress falls, any bets as to how long it'll take the RG to go right for the old homeland?

[Col.Hengist]

Some time I think. There's always a trust factor there.

 I would have to say Donegal has some very good units too. The 2nd DG especially.

[Flieger]

There's probably Tamarite and Skye populations around the Commonwealth descending from transplants or refugees.  Steiner could draw upon those populations while simultenously keeping a torch burning for those lost regions as Liao did for Chesterton.

Very good point, though I am not sure if they alone could sustain an elite formation in which, techically, only a fraction of the Tamar and Skye soldiers can serve. I guess they just get a preference over equally skilled soldiers from other provinces.
I also suspect the Commonwealth keeps the memory of lost provinces alive, but perhaps not with the same fanaticism as the Confederation. It would be intresting to see if a resurgent Commonwealth restores the Tamar Cavaliers e.g.

So if-and-when the Fortress falls, any bets as to how long it'll take the RG to go right for the old homeland?

I hope the Commonwealth concentrates on regaining its factory worlds, especially Arc-Royal.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

Very good point, though I am not sure if they alone could sustain an elite formation in which, techically, only a fraction of the Tamar and Skye soldiers can serve. I guess they just get a preference over equally skilled soldiers from other provinces.
I also suspect the Commonwealth keeps the memory of lost provinces alive, but perhaps not with the same fanaticism as the Confederation. It would be intresting to see if a resurgent Commonwealth restores the Tamar Cavaliers e.g.

It all depends on what counts for membership in a group.  In 314X obviously there'll be in practical terms no Skye or Tamar region born populations available to the Commonwealth, so they'll have to use some sort of ancestry/descent criteria to say "this regiment has so many people from Tamar/Skye regions".  Make that criteria loose enough, and there'll be no problem with demographics.  If all you need to "prove" ancestry is one great grandparent ("1/8th blooded") there should be sufficiently deep pools from which to recruit.  Even if you use a more stringent ancestry requirement to the point that you can't man a regiment, you can reserve key positions for any qualified LCAF officers to keep the regimental proficiency up.  (Kind of like colonial British Army regiments)

[Caedis Animus]

Off the current topic, the name of Hesperus II has always confused me.

"Hesperus" could be a reference to three things; The Western Black Widow Spider, the Evening Star, or "The wreck of the Hesperus" (A poem.)

I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned why Hesperus II is named what it is, but I'm very interested in which would make the most sense.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I like to think of it as being named after Hesperus Mountain.

[Caedis Animus]

Well that just raises further questions!

Well, actually, just one.

[Archangel]

Well that just raises further questions!

Well, actually, just one.

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?   ;D

[Caedis Animus]

Apparently, there are two answers-according to Wikipedia.

Assuming it was ingesting the wood (If "Chuck" is the opposite of "Upchuck" in the context of the saying), it is theorized the Woodchuck could chuck 361.9 cubic centimeters.

Assuming it was chucking, as in moving the wood, it could theoretically move 323 Kilograms of Wood (711 pounds).

Source; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_much_wood_would_a_woodchuck_chuck

[False Son]

It all depends on what counts for membership in a group.  In 314X obviously there'll be in practical terms no Skye or Tamar region born populations available to the Commonwealth, so they'll have to use some sort of ancestry/descent criteria to say "this regiment has so many people from Tamar/Skye regions". 

Maybe there are some former Stormhammers still in the LCAF.

[Dreyf]

I like to think of it as being named after Hesperus Mountain.

There is also one in Alaska Mount Hesperus.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

True, but the Hesperus in Colorado has a social significance  (to the Navajo).  That prominence makes it more likely to inspire a name for a colony than some generic mountain.

[False Son]

Well, the star is named Hesperus, not the planet.  That way it isn't like Earth II.  It is the 2nd planet in the Hesperus system.

Seeing as how there are continents named North and South Whitman, i'm given to the idea it was named after the Longfellow poem.

[Natasha Kerensky]

"Hesperus" could be a reference to three things; The Western Black Widow Spider, the Evening Star, or "The wreck of the Hesperus" (A poem.)

I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned why Hesperus II is named what it is, but I'm very interested in which would make the most sense.

I would go with the Greek personification of what we now know to be the planet Venus in the evening sky, the evening star/god Hesperus.  Hesperus was the son of Eos, the dawn goddess, and the mortal hero Cephalus, a supposed Athenian whose descendants included Odysseus.  The Romans called Hesperus Vesper.

Hesperus had two brothers, one for the planet Venus in the morning, the morning star/god Eosphorus, and one for Venus at night, the bright star/god Phosphorus.  Phosphorus in Latin was known as Lucifer, a name later coopted by Judeo-Christian myth.

When the Greeks later learned from Babylonian texts that the evening star, bright star, and morning star were all the same "wandering star", they then attributed this wandering star to Aphrodite, and Hesperus, Eophorus, and Phosphorus were demoted.  Aphrodite was known as Venus to the Romans, which is where we get the name for the planet.

Just an assumption, but given the deep ancient source, I would assume that other uses of the name Hesperus (spider, poem, real place names) all refer to the Greek god/myth of Hesperus and do not stand independently of it.

FWIW...

[Arthinas]

It all depends on what counts for membership in a group.  In 314X obviously there'll be in practical terms no Skye or Tamar region born populations available to the Commonwealth, so they'll have to use some sort of ancestry/descent criteria to say "this regiment has so many people from Tamar/Skye regions".

There are a few worlds from the old Federation of Skye still inside the Commonwealth's borders, and at least one from the old Tamar Pact. How much the people of those worlds still identify with their ancestral nations is debatable, though.

Maybe there are some former Stormhammers still in the LCAF.

Whatever happened to the Stormhammers, anyway? They were making a name for themselves, and then they just disappeared.

[Top Sergeant]

*turns the lights back on in this thread*

[Deadborder]

Whatever happened to the Stormhammers, anyway? They were making a name for themselves, and then they just disappeared.

The Stormhammers were absorbed into the LCAF under Jasek's command, becoming an independent command. We know nothing about their size, strength and makeup at this point. After several successive maulings by the Wolf Empire, the surviving Stormhammers were merged into the First Steiner Strikers

[JadedFalcon]

FM:3145 (page 130) makes it sound like the opposite, where the Strikers were merged into the Stormhammers, then the to commands were split again. So it kinda sounds like the Stormhammers are still out there as an independent command on 3145?

I don't have TRO3150, so maybe I'm missing details on them?

[Flieger]

FM:3145 (page 130) makes it sound like the opposite, where the Strikers were merged into the Stormhammers, then the to commands were split again. So it kinda sounds like the Stormhammers are still out there as an independent command on 3145?

Indeed, the last information we got on the Stormhammers is that the 1st Strikers were split from them and elevated to a regiment. TRO:3150 does not mention the fate of the Stormhammers after that. Obviously they are not on the LCAF rolls. Curious case, since their founder Jasek Kelswa-Steiner is a Hauptmann-General of the LCAF and commander of the Donegal theatre now. (Unless he is another Jasek).
Probably the Stormhammers remain his private force outside of LCAF command, being relatively small.

[ANS Kamas P81]

So I've been perusing the Succession Wars book, and I really like the idea of picking a regiment descended from the SLDF.  Makes it interesting in the 1SW era, as they're absorbed into the LC formations.  Unfortunately...there's just not all that many of them to pick from, and fewer still that survive until the Dark Age.  I went with the info from Sarna just because it's the easiest to track back and forth through, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Units I can't find any info on: 6th and 7th Arcturan Guards, 11th Hesperus Guards, Sakhalin Regulars (any of them), 181st Heavy Assault Regiment, or 9th and 18th Lyran Guards.  Does anyone know of the eventual fate of these units, or did they just get left off the field manuals and aren't mentioned as getting stood down anywhere?  I'm especially hopeful for the 7th Arcturan, since they're a former Royal unit.

Known destroyed: 19th Lyran Guards (Steel Viper), 5th and 14th Donegal (WoB),

Of the units that survive to the 'end' of Battletech, the 9th Lyran Guard is interesting, being a mix of several battalions of SLDF troops and (according to Sarna) a bunch of anti-Amaris insurgents from the RWR.  17th Arcturan gets to fight a lot of FWL units, including the Wolf's Dragoons back in the day, while also taking on the Clans and the Blakists for quite a while.

I wish there was more info on the 11th Royal Heavy Assault Regiment.  Having a unit descended, eventually, from that force would be a fun bit of continuity; they're the only Royal unit that shows up in the LC rolls.  If anyone wants to fill in some lore info that they might have on those above units, I'd love to hear it.

There's also some SLDF->merc units listed, but only a few.  What happened to the 12th Heavy Assault?  Most of the other merc forces are either well known (Illician Lancers) or wiped out, but it doesn't seem to have any info on the 12th's merc service after they signed with the LC in 2784.

[Deadborder]

A lot of the First Succession War-era units are just names on lists that haven't been fleshed out as yet. Odds are that most of them (Hesperus Guards, Sakhalin Regulars, 181st Heavy Assault etc) simply die during the Succession Wars one way or another. They get nuked to oblivion, functionally destroyed, merged into other commands and so on. Remember, we're still up to only the end of the First SW. The Second is going to bring about more mass destruction and more tech loss, which will kill more commands. And then there's going to be the long, slow grind of the Third.

(For comparison, the CCAF is basically destroyed during the Succession wars, with very few units or even formations making it all the way through)

Most Sarna articles are back-filled from the unit's first fictional appearance, which means  a listing in a 3025 or 3050-era book and going forwards (eg, the Field Manual series, circa 3058-3062) . If a unit doesn't have a Sarna article but was about during the First Succession War, odds are that it doesn't exist by the time of the Clan Invasion. Remember, we've still got a book on the Second Succession War to come, and that's going to probably deal with the fates of many of the commands you mentioned.

I'd also wager that, given the level of destruction and technological loss seen during the early Succession Wars, any unit containing Royal equipment wouldn't have been able to maintain it for that long.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Yeah, that's been my assumption, but I don't have /all/ the books and Sarna's not a complete thing either.  I figured I'd toss one out and see if anyone's aware of what might have happened to those units, if there was ever a mention somewhere else that got missed.

[Col.Hengist]

Add the 6th DG to being destroyed by WoB and merged into the 7th.

[Kit deSummersville]

The Hesperus Guards showed up in The Succession Wars board game (along with the York Regulars). Both made their reappearance in FR2750: LC.

[Øystein]

The Hesperus Guards showed up in The Succession Wars board game (along with the York Regulars). Both made their reappearance in FR2750: LC.

When making the Field Report 2750 units, I did my best to include as much of old name-dropped units I could. Like the York Regulars and Hesperus Guards.

Øystein

[ANS Kamas P81]

Neat.  I suppose I'll have to wait to find out what happens to them until the 2nd SW book comes out.

I guess I can stick with my old standby; the 15th Lyran Regulars are around in the era too, and are still a Heavy unit.  I really should learn to love light 'Mechs.

[Col.Hengist]

Neat.  I suppose I'll have to wait to find out what happens to them until the 2nd SW book comes out.

I guess I can stick with my old standby; the 15th Lyran Regulars are around in the era too, and are still a Heavy unit.  I really should learn to love light 'Mechs.

 It's some times hard to like light mechs, especially since we make so many good heavy designs.

 We make some incredible light mechs too.

[False Son]

We make some incredible light mechs too.

Yes.  This is true.  Good mediums, too, depending on the era.  But, Lyran lights are not Kuritan assaults.  Lyran lights are actually good, but overshadowed by the Lyran big gun complex.

[Col.Hengist]

It's actually surprising how many people make fun of us for the "wall of steel" or "Atlas scout lance" and then proceeded to use mostly heavies and assaults against me.