I've lurked for quite a long-time, initially on-and-off during my personal "Dark Age" where I had drifted away from BT, and then a little bit more as my interest in the Jihad-era took hold. In fact, it is probably fair to say that it was the Jihad Book series which really brought me back. I read the first book in a variety of places, trains, cafes, my sofa, the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh (no really, I took that, some lunch and a flask of coffee up to the top of the hill one summer morning. I was sitting reading about the unfolding chaos on the FS/CapCon border whilst looking down on the City from that viewpoint). I loved the sense of confusion and chaos in the book, and it got me to thinking I wanted to reinvest psychologically in the game universe again - and that the Jihad was the ideal setting to recreate my old Merc Unit.
And so it began... A journey of buying sourcebooks, playing Megamek engagements against the bot, and updating my ToE to reflect salvage gained and lossess suffered (who knew I would end up loving Grasshoppers so much, or having such a record of trashing Highlanders - or that my LEGO mecha would become the framework I would start designing custom mechs around). Now I am well and truly back in, equipped with all the 3145 Tech Readouts, and the relevant Field Manual, so I can see what the future holds, and considering carefully which mechwarriors in my ToE get the injoke names (Mary Quant may be a joke, but she is a real dangerous joke, and poor Rebecca Black - effective, capable but unable to make an ejection roll when it counted...)
But to really put the finger on what brought me back, the sense of possibility and freedom that Catalyst wrung from the Jihad. Sure, I knew how it ended in broad - but somehow that didn't matter when I read "Dawn of The Jihad", for all of the people on the ground level of the universe it could and did end any number of ways. And it was that sense of narrative progression which hooked me back in. A forward-flowing river of fictional history, compared with the eternal now of the other game setting I had been flirting with.
But I'm rambling now. Time to break out the Wok to cook dinner, and crack open a bottle of ale in honour of Timbuki Dark - I've still got one or two mechs to evaluate for addition to the Sevent Volunteers' ToE...
Karl