ROM is tasked with PROTECTING COMSTAR. The only document incident under Blake is when Jerome Blake sent out ROM to kill Maskirovka agents who were going to ASSASSINATE a Comstar leader.
Which was based on thin evidence. And when you control all interstellar communications you can make them say what you want. And before that he was sending possible defectors to re-education camps.
To be known as ROM, this secret intelligence network would locate threats to Comstar and eliminate them before any damage was done.
That is their original intent, word for word.
Being using in Operation Holy Shroud, as an offensive means to kill scientists or whatnot is NOT their original intent under Jerome Blake.
Again, Comstar page 14,
"ROM was formed to help prevent leakage of technological information to the outside and to help thwart defection of ComStar personnel to the Successor States."
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Yes but the original point is that Comstar's mandate was different, depending on the primus. People paint Comstar as simply religious zealots who go out and kill scientists or whatnot but that's not the case. It is in some instance under some leaders, but not under all leaders.
While not all of them are religious zealots who go out and kills scientists Jerome Blake set the tone by stripping nearby worlds of advanced technology, killing those who tried to obtain it, and sending personnel who wanted to defect to re-education camps. His followers just followed his lead.
ROM is fundamentally not an offensive organization, it's defensive. Explorer corps is not a missionary group, it's . . . exploring for external threats (ie defensive).
Who's first operations were to throw defectors into camps and then assassinate foreign personnel on the thinnest of evidence.
ROM is to Comstar, as the Maskirovka is to Capellan Confederation.
And the Maskirovka aren't nice people.
Some people however are trying to paint ROM as the Death Commandos. When they're not.
When they function the same and act the same was they're going to be called the same.
I'm not confusing what ROM is, I'm saying that what ROM and what Comstar do depends on their leadership and not every leader had the same mandate. As time went on, the general goals of Comstar shifted but even then they varied by Primus.
From Blake to Mori Comstar's goal has been to keep advanced technology in Comstar's hands. By the time Mori became primus people were on to Comstar and had taken measures against Comstar.
You should probably reread it. Here it is:
I was reading it as I quoted it.
Nothing is said about technology recovered(or developed) by the Great Houses independently.
Page 16,
Having lost a majority of her nation's technology to the First Succession War, Chancellor Ilsa Liao of the Capellan Confederation sought to restore her realms technological base by bribing ComStar technicians to defect to the Confederation.
"keeping advanced IE ComStar technology out of the hands of the Inner Sphere" ;D Operations Holy Shroud I and Holy Shroud II targeted far more sciences than interstellar communications. Since when does medical technology or civil engineering belong to ComStar? For that matter how do they even threaten ComStar's HPG network?
By then all advance technology was "ComStar" technology.
Completely incorrect. At the time of ROM's founding a lot of technology that was to become lostech was still fairly widespread. You apparently merely skimmed the book rather than read it and are liberally misquoting. Chancellor Ilsa Liao was trying to gain control of ComStar's HPG stations in the Confederation not rebuild their technology base which still hadn't dropped significantly as they would in the Second and Third Succession Wars. In the Creation of ROM section (p16):
Reread page 16. Ilsa needed ComStar personnel to rebuild the Capellan technology base.
Ilsa simply wanted to control all communications within the Confederation.
Again, from page 16,
The evidence was thin at best, but the possibility of an external threat was enough to force the Prime Administrator to act.
The bold is mine. Has that
thin evidence ever been reveled? For all I know the evidence was the Chancellor telling her people that ComStar wouldn't help them and some ticked off citizens stormed the HPG demanding they help. And if they've twisted evidence once, why not do it again and make an effective message to all the House Lords at the same time?
