the history of the BattleTech universe spans over a thousand years and covers the rise, fall, and rebirth of many empires, heroes, and villains. the following overview represents a highly simplified version of this deep history.
COLONIZING THE STARS
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, two men—thomas Kearny and takayoshi Fuchida—discovered the principles behind faster-than-light travel. Although no one believed them at first, less than a century later, the Kearny-Fuchida drive finally helped humankind take its place among the distant stars with the first extra-solar colony established on the world of New Earth in 2116.
Within another one hundred years, the human sphere of influence included six hundred extra-solar colonies, all founded within 120 light-years of terra.
In 2236, several colony worlds—chafing under an increasingly restrictive terran Alliance—launched a rebellion against their homeworld government. In response to this so-called Outer Reaches Rebellion, the terran Alliance government suddenly severed all ties to its colonies beyond a thirty light-year radius, whether such worlds wanted independence or not. As “mother terra” drew inward, new alliances formed among the distant colonies, desperate to survive in a universe void of terran trade and terran security. these alliances eventually formed the five states of the Inner Sphere: the Capellan Confederation, the Draconis Combine, the Federated Suns, the Free Worlds League, and the Lyran Commonwealth.
Devlin Stone, in his custom Atlas II, leaves a destroyed Word of Blake Arcangel in his wake.
t h e b A t t l e t e c h u n Iv e r S e
introduction Kerensky, to fight a long and bloody war of liberation. though
ultimately victorious some seven years later, Kerensky saw the League he fought for torn asunder by the surviving House Lords—each of whom claimed the right to take the throne left vacant by the lost Cameron family.
Desperate to avoid the coming conflicts, Kerensky led the bulk of the Star League Defense Force to parts unknown—
and, in so doing, left the Inner Sphere to almost three hundred years of constant warfare.
the Succession Wars, as they came to be known, effectively threw the Ares Conventions into the fire as the Houses tore into each other with every weapon in their arsenal. Whole worlds were wiped out by chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons, while JumpShips and factories of every kind were targeted in a bid to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure.
technology vital for the survival of interstellar empires became nearly irreplaceable as the specialized factories and parts were quickly lost, forcing a return to the kind of low-intensity warfare espoused by the nearly forgotten Ares Conventions.
this change left the Inner Sphere in a virtual stalemate until Houses Steiner and Davion allied in 3028 and launched the devastating Fourth Succession War that nearly ripped the Capellan Confederation in two. By 3030, a single mighty empire—led by the marriage of Steiner and Davion rulers—
united almost half of the Inner Sphere under its banner, and though they met defeat when trying to conquer the Draconis Combine in 3039, an eventual Steiner-Davion conquest of the entire Inner Sphere seemed all but assured.
Until, in the waning days of the 3040s, a new enemy appeared…
THE CLAN INvASION
After centuries in exile, the descendants of Aleksandr Kerensky’s long-departed SLDF forces returned to the Inner Sphere with a vengeance. tearing their way through the Periphery in 3048, the warriors of the Clans—with their strange customs, advanced Battlemechs, and battle-armored infantry—were at first seen by the people of the Inner Sphere as alien invaders. their attacking forces smashed through the front-line troops of the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine alike, and nearly destroyed the newborn Free Rasalhague Republic that lay between them. It took unprecedented cooperation between the Great Houses and the might of ComStar’s army to halt the invasion in 3052, but at a terrible price.
the Clan Invasion sparked a surge in the technological renaissance that had only just begun in the Inner Sphere.
Within a few years, the threatened nations of the Inner Sphere had pushed military production and sophistication to near-Star League levels, and even mighty WarShips—lost since the early years of the Succession Wars—once more flew under the banners of the Great Houses.
Unfortunately, ComStar’s victory against the Clans at tukayyid had only bought a fifteen-year truce, and in the effective absence of a mutual threat, the realms of the Inner Sphere once more turned envious eyes upon each other. Even as some leaders worked tirelessly toward a more lasting end to the Clan threat, the machinations of others divided the Federated Commonwealth in two and ignited the worlds around terra in war.
THE AGE OF WAR
In the year 2398, the Capellan Confederation declared war against the Free Worlds League over the world of Andurien and its neighboring systems. Soon afterward, conflict spread out across human-occupied space as the other interstellar alliances and empires fell upon one another in a savage series of wars. this period of constant fighting—spanning nearly two centuries and hundreds of worlds—saw the creation of the first Battlemechs and the birth of the Ares Conventions.
the Battlemech, invented by the terran Hegemony in 2439, would soon become the ultimate weapon in conventional ground warfare, blending superior mobility, resilience, adaptability, and firepower in a single package piloted by an individual warrior. After its proven trial by fire in 2443, the technology quickly spread to the other realms of the Inner Sphere, revolutionizing the face of modern warfare.
Equally significant were the Ares Conventions. First proposed by Capellan Chancellor Aleisha Liao, the Conventions were an interstellar agreement to limit warfare and avoid the horrors of mutually assured destruction across entire worlds.
Unfortunately, while their spirit would survive even into the thirty-first century, the Ares Conventions also legitimized the concept of resolving political and economic disputes through war by establishing rules for “limited warfare”.
By the time the Age of War ended in 2571, warfare had been so revolutionized by the Battlemech and the Ares Conventions that conflicts now resembled personal duels or chess matches more than full-on bloodshed.
THE STAR LEAGUE
Also referred to as the Golden Age of Humankind, the first Star League era began when the five Great Houses of the Inner Sphere joined with House Cameron—lords of the terran Hegemony—to create the Star League in 2571. the result of brilliant diplomacy and military cunning, the Star League unified the six largest states of the Inner Sphere in a single confederacy of nations. But while the Star League ended war between the Great Houses, its first order of business upon its formation was to declare war on the Periphery realms that held out against the alliance.
Driven by the ideal of bringing all of humanity under one rule, the Star League launched the Reunification War against the Periphery realms. Ultimately victorious, the Star League reigned over all worlds without contest for over two hundred years. Under the leadership of the Cameron family, and the ever-watchful protection of the Star League Defense Force, the Star League ushered in a time of relative peace and prosperity—a pinnacle of human civilization.
But like all great empires, the Star League was destined to fall…
THE SUCCESSION WARS
In 2766, Stefan Amaris, lord of the Rim Worlds Republic—
then largest of all the Periphery states—killed the young First Lord Richard Cameron and his family in a bloody coup years in the making. Having lured the trusting SLDF away from terra to quell a sudden Periphery-wide revolt, the Rim Worlds troops swiftly seized and shattered the terran Hegemony, ultimately forcing the Star League’s commanding general, Aleksandr
THE DARK AGE
the Republic Era (as it was officially called) began with a rocky start, but did eventually usher in a new age of peace. For a time, the various Houses and Clans turned toward the task of rebuilding from the Jihad, restoring their bombed-out infrastructure, and working to minimize conflict. Generations grew up who knew the horrors of war only through history books, or the occasional
“brush war”. the Republic was a beacon to all, an egalitarian realm where the right to rule was no longer limited to one’s bloodline, and no longer had to be taken by force.
Yet even this was not to last.
In the year 3132, over three-quarters of the Inner Sphere’s entire interstellar communications network suddenly went down amid rumors of strange attacking forces. Immediately panicked, the populations of many worlds feared the worst, and took up arms, certain that war was coming. the Great Houses once again mobilized their armies, and factories long converted to civilian pursuits hastily returned to the business of building weapons.
Before long, the fighting began anew, raging on every border.
the Republic of the Sphere buckled beneath the onslaught of enemies new and old, while ancient enmities returned with a vengeance, igniting front lines that stabilized decades before.
the Dark Age, as it is now known, continues today. But many suspect that a new dawn is coming, even as the Clans and Houses tear into each other once more.
CIvIL WAR ERA
In 3060, the Successor States and ComStar re-formed the Star League in an effort to destroy the Clan threat once and for all.
the allied forces, united under a new Star League Defense Force, combined to destroy the Smoke Jaguar Clan, effectively shattering the head of the Clans’ militant Crusader faction. But as the allies won a formal end to the Clan invasion, tensions mounted at home between the sundered Federated Commonwealth states, while a resurgent Capellan Confederation launched its own campaign to reclaim many of its long lost territories.
the FedCom Civil War finally erupted in 3062 and raged until early 3067, savaging two founding members of the reborn Star League—the Federated Suns and the Lyran Alliance—while igniting several other conflicts in their bordering nations as well.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Houses Davion and Steiner stood once more apart, their realms battered. Although some dared look to a bright future in the hopes that the new Star League would finally contain war throughout the Inner Sphere, others saw a reborn League that had stood idly by as its member states nearly destroyed one another.
On the eve of the Star League conference in November of 3067, the future of the Inner Sphere hung in the balance.
THE WORD OF BLAKE JIHAD
At the Star League conference in 3067, the leaders of the Capellan Confederation, Federated Suns, and Lyran Alliance shocked their fellow House Lords by declaring the new Star League a failure and pulling out of the alliance. the Star League’s supporters reacted with universal dismay, but one—the Word of Blake—took this event hardest of all.
Formed in 3052, after the Clans’ defeat at tukayyid, the Word of Blake represented the fanatical, quasi-religious factions that left ComStar when its new leadership moved for a more secular and open relationship with the Inner Sphere. though seen as radicals and often derided by their former ComStar brethren, the Word of Blake built its strength quickly, seizing terra from ComStar in 3058 and gradually expanding its influence throughout the Periphery, Free Worlds League, and the abandoned worlds near terra. By 3064, the Word had won probationary membership in the new Star League, and anticipated their full membership in 3067 as the realization of a great prophecy.
When instead the Star League disbanded, the most radical elements in the Word of Blake launched a string of attacks that inadvertently ignited a war across the entire Inner Sphere—a holy war of immense proportions. In just a few short months, the Word’s disastrous efforts to force the Star League to re-form at gunpoint unleashed a conflict that pitted the entire Inner Sphere against them and saw the use of terrible weapons not seen since the third Succession War.
Ultimately, it took a coalition of allied states, commanded by a resistance leader named Devlin Stone, to bring down the Word of Blake’s reign of terror. By then, billions had died and whole worlds were wiped off the interstellar maps, rendered uninhabitable by the rampant use of nuclear and biological weapons. In the wake of their victory, Stone and his allied forged the Republic of the Sphere, a new realm at the heart of the Inner Sphere, dedicated to the ideals of strength and unity for peoples of all realms.
introduction
introductory alpha strike
standard alpha strike
abstract aerospace system
advanced options
alpha strike campaign rules
era setting:
the clan invasion
the battletech universe the Federated Suns is very liberal when it comes to personal
freedom and trade, with a free market economy that allows its citizens to pursue personal profit. militarily, they prefer combined-arms warfare and strategic initiative, valuing the virtues of the mobility and maneuvering over brute force and savagery.
HOUSE KURITA (DRACONIS COMBINE) Founded: 2319
Patterned on the culture of feudal Japan, and ruled by a hierarchy of warlords loyal to the shogunate ideals of the ruling House Kurita, the Draconis Combine is a realm whose warriors and citizenry embrace the tenets of bushido—the ancient Japanese Way of the Warrior. to the people of the Combine, honor and duty are the very cornerstones of society, without which there can be nothing. While these social mores have made the Combine’s military one of the most fearsome and fanatical on the battlefield, it was the modernist reforms of Coordinator theodore Kurita that transformed the DCmS into an even more deadly force.
Hard pressed during the Clan invasion—to the point where their own capital of Luthien teetered on the brink of a Clan occupation—the “Dragon” repaid its would-be conquerors by leading the charge to Annihilate Clan Smoke Jaguar. today, riddled with internal enemies in the form of the reactionary Black Dragon Society, while fighting a war of attrition against the Word of Blake, Coordinator Hohiro Kurita and his supreme warlord, Kanrei Kiyomori minamoto, have struggled to achieve the twin goals of unifying their realm and turning back the deadly Word of Blake offensive.
A particularly harsh and xenophobic society, the Draconis Combine maintains a socialist market economy and a rigid leadership divided into social castes. militarily, the Draconis Combine mustered Soldiery continues to struggle with the twin ideals of personal honor and glory, and the need to function as a unit against a determined enemy. thus, in battle it is as common to see a lone Combine warrior challenge a superior force as it is to see entire formations combine their might to bring down an enemy.