Another fine issue:
The Plowshare: An interesting look at what the Goliath Scorpions were up to while the Invading Clans were prepping for the big day. Interesting that the Inner Sphere traders are able to transact in C-Bills this far out in the Deep Periphery, so Roskan must be on what passes for a major shipping lane utilized by the Explorer Corps.
Voices of the Sphere: The New Mercenary Market: As noted, the MRBC seems to be on the way out. Will the Sea Foxes have the same sort of monopoly?
Signing Day: A nice fleshing out of a throwaway line from the NAIS Military Atlas of the 4th Succession War, about the Waco Rangers recruiting locals during their fight for Satalice. This being the Waco Rangers, I was sort of hoping to see Jed being asked to take the "Death Oath," pledging vengeance upon Wolf's Dragoons as a condition of enlisting.
Battle Cobra: Another throwaway FASA line turned into a fleshed out article - following up on a statement that ComStar had built their own copies of captured Battle Cobras. I like the idea of making it a progenitor of the Celestial series.
Ghostbird: A nice companion piece to Bryan's recent novel, giving Alexis a far deeper backstory and giving us a window into interactions between the Ghost Bears and civilians in the Rasalhague Dominion.
Cockpit Amenities: This sort of content was long overdue. I think the last time such amenities were visited was in Stardate Vol. 3 #5, as part of Blaine Pardoe's NAIS MechWarrior Training Manual article series. This is far more comprehensive, and an excellent resource for RPG players.
Unit Digest: First Kearny Highlanders: A nice update on what happened to the Highlanders after Terra, and a lead-in to the short fiction in the Alpha Strike box set.
Up Close: Interesting to see the perspective from a FWL backwater, where even a decade in, the reality of the Clan Invasion hasn't set in, and people still aren't sure what's real or myth.
Inner Sphere Ingenuity: Matthew Cross continues the 3125 lecture series on technology, this time covering Inner Sphere technological advances from the Clan perspective. Usually, we get an Inner Sphere commentator going on about the superiority of Clan tech, so it's fun to see the conversation from the other side.
Comin' to Towne: I've always liked Vic Milan's concept of Towne's megafauna, and when the call came for a holiday-themed article, I couldn't resist using the holiday jingle as inspiration to set an adventure there, complete with Krampus, Santana's Slayers going down en route to deliver gifts, and highlighting the BattleTech line's lack of a DNC-3R Dancer, PNC-3R Prancer, or CP-1D Cupid. When I tested it out with my daughter, she found exploits I'd never considered when writing it (such as, instead of sneaking past the Eiglotherium pile, breaking into the 'Mech bay and hacking into the Barghest, then using it to turn the Eiglotherium herd against the Beastlords. Never been so proud.) Unlike last year's Christmas Eve Coup dream sequence, this sucker's canon.
Hell's Highway: The first new Hell's Horses fiction since Philip Lee's "A Living Epitaph" (a BattleCorps piece about a sibko getting slaughtered back in the Kerensky Cluster). I love it - fleshes out character motivations, and puts them in a cross-country race that requires local climate/geography knowledge to evade the Jade Falcons. Puts the Cannonball Run to shame.
Information Software at War: The Automated BattleMech Recognition Framework: Building on all the warbook errors seen in the opening chapters of Lethal Heritage, it expands the concept back to the dawn of the BattleMech. Interestingly, the Kurita ones show that Urizen Kurita II wasn't building from scratch when he imposed Japanese cultural standards in the 2600s - they already had significant cachet for the Combine and DCMS in the 2400s and 2500s, putting these designators in line with the Chi-ha APC of that era.
Three Ways Home: Tom Leveen continues his four-part Taurian Concordat story on the eve of the Reunification War. It shows that the Concordat wasn't a monolithic state with cultural unity in the antebellum period. I wonder if the last segment will address the start of the war, and the need to pull together in the face of the looming Davion/Star League invasion?
The Few and the Many: The Canopian Medical Industry's Cultural Isolation: Many sourcebooks have made note of how much better Canopian medical providers are than the rest of Canopian society. Significantly more educated, higher quality work, etc., while as of 3025, much of the average Canopian populace reads at the fifth grade level. I wonder to what extent the divergence is due to the internal culture (which is shown to be grueling) or due to external influences (as hinted at in Randall Bills' "Darkness" Iron Writer story, which suggested that Canopian medical advancements had been provided by outsiders...possibly Clan Wolverine)?
The Space Cowboys from Quatre Belle: This pairs nicely with other Outworlds Alliance stories of this time period, such as Kevil Killiany's Pitcairn Star and Craig Reed's Groundpounder. Taken together, they begin to trace the evolving relationship between the two aerospace-centric groups.
After Action Report: Longbow Mountain: The genesis of this article was a desire to revisit some of the early FASA materials (like the Mercenary's Handbook) that had unintentionally goofed on the stellar geography because a central resource hadn't been developed at the time they were written. Rather than trying to retcon things as "oh, that was just plain wrong," I wanted to go the other way - yes, that makes no sense...unless you know the full context. Then, you have a story. Plus, after a nice setup in the Periphery sourcebook and scoring the cover of the original Shrapnel anthology, the timeline moved on and failed to really do anything with the character of Helmar Valasek, so this gave me a chance to revisit the ol' rogue.
Our Two Weeks' Notice: A nicely balanced city battle. Even better, if you get the new Alpha Strike box, you can fight it with those rules and use the included building fold-ups.
Seal the Deal: A tale spanning decades, this explains why TRO: 3058 lauded the machine as the first new 'Mech design to go into production in centuries, chronicling the difficulties involved in trying to bring the original 'Mech construction example to market. A fun read.
