BattleTech Ideas and Discussion
- Thread starter XelianEmperor
- Start date
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I could have sworn I've seen someone try this already…
There was a discussion on this topic over at SB a while back.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
It was in the Battletech thread. Search for 'Bakarina' and 'Bakarine,' as both spellings are used. Sadly, it does not appear to have gotten a story.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
The thing that amuses me is the implication (as required by a faithful adaptation) of an Otome game in which Katherine is the villain.
Which is to say: Who is the protagonist, who (other than Victor, and I'm guessing Theodore) are there to be captured, how does the game give Natasha Kerensky a proper cameo, and what is the setting, precisely?
Which is to say: Who is the protagonist, who (other than Victor, and I'm guessing Theodore) are there to be captured, how does the game give Natasha Kerensky a proper cameo, and what is the setting, precisely?
- Location
- Switzerland
I might give it a try once I finish my current BT story. Which is currently on hiatus, alas.
I'm not sure the harem shenanigans parts were planned to be central when we spitballed the idea. It was more "A BT fangirl gets reincarnated as The Bitch and tries to avoid bad endings". And I think that's perfectly fine - the spirit of Bakarina isn't tied to harem, but to trying to avoid bad ends, and BT has a huge bad ending for the FC.
Validation Threadmark
Mal-3
Fun Tyrant
I don't know why I'm posting this here instead of the high-traffic thread. Honestly I don't know why I'm posting this at all. Maybe some desperate need for validation as a (thoroughly failed) creative? I don't know. Anyway, here's a Thing. Enjoy, I guess.
Poorly.
Though let's be fair: the previous landlords weren't exactly a great bunch of guys either. By the beginning of the 24th century a combination of social and ideological forces had fused together late 20th century neoliberalism with a romanticized version of medieval European feudalism. This was not a good thing, but it was just stable enough to persist despite the fact that all these new little despots had no problems whatsoever chucking nuclear weapons at each other without much provocation. And so the last few centuries have been one long conga line of war, colonialism, revanchism and other things that've made the galaxy a pretty shitty place to live in. But then the mad scientists showed up and, well, it does say something that direct rule by freakin' wizards often sounds like a better deal than rule by a feudal overlord in a giant robot.
So (as the ancient philosopher would say) what is the deal with these mad scientists? Well, that is in itself a long story.
To the best of our knowledge, Science-Related Memetic Disorder (or like most people call it, The Spark) has been around to one extent or another since the very beginning. (Possibly even earlier, as archaeologists keep digging up strange and uncanny nonsense that suggests the deep history of humanity doesn't start at a bunch of cave paintings – but I digress.) We don't know where the spark comes from or how it works; theories abound (naturally) and we know a few things, like how it seems to have a genetic component – sparks are more likely to have sparky children, etc. – but that's about it. The spark seems to have been relatively rare through recorded history, the few recorded sparks only existing on the fringes of human society for the most part. Only sparks of remarkable strength like Tesla, Edison and Helsingard managed to make any sort of notable dent in the historical record in the 20th century. The last person in the historical record we can point to and say "this was a spark" with any degree of confidence was R. van Rijn, the last science minister of the Old Star League and a subject of great mystery. But sparks like these – hell, sparks of any strength whatsoever – were rarities. Sparks were a one in a hundred billion outliers compared to the rest of humanity.
But then something happened and things changed. Nobody knows what, though the handful of people who've investigated the issue think it has something to do with the experiments of Sir Calvin Hammersmith, a scientist in the Federated Suns who poked at the structure of hyperspace until it poked back. A few people, usually dismissed as swivel-eyed lunatics by everybody else, blame one of the (surprisingly large number of) secret societies currently loose in the galaxy today, like the Order of the Illuminati or the Resurgent Knights of the Synarchic Temple. The most boring scientists suggest that it's just a weird quirk of large numbers, that the overall population is just big enough now that we're finally starting to notice. Ultimately the exact mechanism isn't important – at the moment – the point is that in 2970 there were maybe a dozen sparks of noticeable strength out of an estimated population in the low trillions, and in 2976 sparks started coming out of the woodwork in record numbers. While still a tiny fraction of the population these new sparks were stronger on average than most others, which meant that their creations were also way more visible to the general public. It is also known that sparks tend to gravitate towards each other, and when they meet they may collaborate or argue, and sparks are often known for having astonishing ego problems. So even a few thousand sparks distributed randomly across the whole of the Inner Sphere is more than enough to start making waves.
And boy did they ever.
Let's roll back to the previous landlords. As noted, the galaxy was ruled by a medievalist neoliberalism that was called in academic circles neofeudalism. The particulars aren't incredibly important and will be covered elsewhere in greater detail; suffice to say that the whole thing was designed to maintain the wealth and power of the people who bought in first with as little disruption to the status quo as humanly possible. The original neofeudal leaders – men and women whose legacy were the Great and Minor Houses of the Inner Sphere – were successful capitalists and/or pirates (the distinction is often academic) of the early interstellar age who managed to secure control over the colonies as the last vestiges of the previous neoliberal order decayed into neofeudalism. As they were often the only ones with the resources needed to buy or build weapons, the Houses evolved into warlords, ruling strictly via bigger-army diplomacy. And as an insurance policy, the Houses spent generations depoliticizing their subjects, convincing them that there really wasn't much point caring about which flag flew over which planet (this was untrue), that there wasn't much difference between Houses (this was both hilariously untrue and far, far truer than the Houses were comfortable admitting) and that wasn't much of a future, just the now going on forever and ever. (We'll get back to that.)
It didn't hurt the Houses that technological advances in warfare continued apace, always leaving the best and most effective toys in the hands of those with the money, time and resources to manufacture them – which were naturally the Houses. By the 25th century the neofeudal order reached its ultimate expression in the mighty (if somewhat silly) BattleMech, bipedal weapons platforms that allowed the Houses to concentrate literal military power in the hands of a smaller elite corps, creating the military caste needed to seal neofeudalism's power forever. Through neofeudalism and BattleMechs the Houses built the Old Star League, tore down the Old League in the Amaris War and the Succession Wars, and generally squabbled amongst themselves, secure in the knowledge that nothing mattered except the now, and nobody would – or could – stop them.
Then things started mattering again, and the whole galaxy went topsy-turvy. The resurgence of the spark in the 2970s was definitely a catalyst for what came next, as it was something that the neofeudal lords of the Inner Sphere, fluent in the language of violence but not a whole lot else, weren't really equipped to handle. At first, sparks tended to be singular eccentrics that could be co-opted or destroyed by the powers that be. This is the age where the Spark Houses are established in places like the Federated Suns and Free Worlds League, a new class of nobility where sparks of sufficient ability could establish themselves as court wizards to the existing Houses. Names of more recent infamy such as Vapnoople, von Blitzengaard, Sun, Mongfish, Banzai, Richter, Monahan and Shaburova were part of this initial wave of sparks, joining together with the local nobility and becoming part of the system. In theory this assimilation could have continued, much in the same way that the hyperrich capitalist class of the 21st and 22nd centuries were absorbed into the neofeudal order of the 24th. Unfortunately – for neofeudalism at least – the sparks kept coming at all levels of class and caste strata in the Inner Sphere, not all of them were willing to yoke themselves to non-spark rulers and almost every single one was prouder than the Devil himself.
As sparks kept popping up, so did instability within the Successor States. In the first generation or so between the resurgence and the beginning of the 31st century things didn't pop off in any large way. While sparks kept showing up, causing a ruckus and occasionally knocking over continental or planetary Houses, their ambitions tended to stop there and so long as the taxes kept flowing to the capitals the Great Houses weren't terribly worried. While the amount of Minor House churn had increased a bit, it was still within historical norms for the Succession Wars and it was easy enough to pretend that everything was completely under control. (Spoiler alert: it wasn't.) By the turn of the next century things were starting to reach a tipping point. Not only had spark shenanigans started to become more visible to the greater galaxy – the infamous penny sparklie first appears in the 2990s – it was also becoming more and more clear to the intelligentsia that the neofeudal Houses were starting to strain under keeping all of this nonsense under their thumb. Sensing weakness, people started straining against the system looking for the breakpoints, and also began putting together plans for what came next.
One of these people was a young spark by the name of Sarah Demetriou, a conflict orphan of the Third Succession War (2866 – 3001) who had been taken in by the Order of ComStar in the 2980s. Sarah turned out to be a strong spark, particularly charismatic and – extremely rare in sparks – focused mainly on mad social science. With access to ComStar's extensive library she was able to mine the past for inspiration, looking for something that might provide a base of stability instead of the looming apocalyptic war between spark and noble that would likely fragment the Inner Sphere beyond all previous reckoning. In the end she devised a system that mobilized the galaxy's lower classes, provided them with the tools necessary to maintain a far more equitable order and build a more sustainable prosperity across interstellar ranges. Sarah called this form of democratic socialism symphonic socialism or simply symphonism. As a second-order effect of her initial proselytizing within ComStar's ranks, she also was the claimed founder of a new form of Blakist religious doctrine, where instead of waiting for the Houses to batter themselves into extinction ComStar would support regime change when the people of the Inner Sphere moved.
This new Blakist sect, dubbed Prometheanism, spread quickly through ComStar's lower ranks. Many Blakists within the Order at the turn of the century had no love for the Houses but also saw more of the harm done by ComStar's inaction during the Succession Wars. Even those who were not Promethean or Blakist in general ended up drawn into Sarah's orbit, including her fellow spark and longtime confidant Nicholas Wulfenbach. Wulfenbach, also an orphan who ended up in ComStar in the 2980s, immediately saw the potential of symphonism and the pair started drafting plans that could see a strong symphonist movement emerging as a counterbalance to the spark/nobility conflict. This drew the attention of ComStar's elders. Most of the upper hierarchy were orthodox Blakists or Karpovites, who followed a doctrine that the Houses needed to be destroyed and replaced by ComStar as the sole hegemon of the Inner Sphere. Prometheanism/symphonism and Karpovite ideology were inherently hostile, and Demetriou's intelligence and charisma made her a threat to the Order's current power structure. Unable to co-opt her and leery of killing her for fear of creating an internal martyr, the First Circuit ordered Demetriou, Wulfenbach and a handful of her most devoted disciples exiled to the distant backwater world Somerset in 2993.
In years to come, those members of the First Circuit who survived the next fifteen years would call the decision to exile the symphonists instead of doing something – anything – else with them the single biggest mistake ComStar ever made. Because dismissing sparks, even ones as even-tempered as Sarah Demetriou and Nicholas Wulfenbach, as not worth the effort to oppose is a very dangerous proposition. They had been proverbially laughed out of the academy, and now they were going to show them all.
Seven years after ComStar exiled a pair of sparks and their followers to the fringe Lyran Commonwealth world of Somerset, an underground movement of liberals, socialists, anarchists and other undesirables known as the Green Orchestra emerged from the shadows in the most dramatic political maneuver since old Stefan Amaris killed the last First Lord of the Old League and set the Succession Wars in motion. The Commonwealth had known that the Orchestra existed beforehand, but hadn't taken them all that seriously. Sparks with egos were a dime a dozen by 3001, and the movement hadn't really seemed all that dangerous. At first glance, it was an alliance of idealistic students with more heart than brain and backwoods peasants, none of who were familiar with the "real world" of House politics and backed by a handful of tinkerers and toymakers. None of them seemed to have significant foreign backing, and eccentrics obsessed with crude 21st century tech like solar panels weren't building BattleMechs or any weapons of import. So far as Loki and other Lyran spymasters were concerned, the Orchestra wasn't worth the energy needed to subvert or break. Archon Alessandro Steiner had more important things to worry about at the time; he was building forces for his last great attempt to break the Free Worlds League, and anything that could've distracted from that was happily circular-filed. In years to come Alessandro's tunnel vision would be decried by reactionaries across the Inner Sphere as "the blindness that killed empires, friend and foe alike," but it's hard to be too mad at the Archon for this – the Orchestra concealed itself very well.
In the end, things moved before the revolutionary vanguard was truly ready. The then-reigning Duke of Somerset was Wilfrid Steiner, a cousin of the main royal line, technical governor of the half-dozen or so worlds within jump range of Somerset and painfully insecure of his position. Under pressure from the native Cornish clans and fearing replacement by Tharkad, Duke Wilfrid began enforcing a crackdown on "rebellious behavior." On 1 February 3001 an otherwise-peaceful protest against the duke's heavy-handed actions was broken up by ducal security forces and mercenary BattleMechs. In the chaos, members of the Orchestra moved to protect the protesters and bystanders, partially revealing the movement to the government. Demetriou and Wulfenbach would have preferred to have another couple years preparing and spreading symphonist doctrine around, but the duke forced their hand. Wildcat strikes led by symphonists in solidarity with the Somserset protesters began the day after the protest, and after two weeks of rising tensions the Orchestra moved into open revolutionary conflict on 14 February, an act that would forever be known as the Valentine Rising.
On Somerset and a dozen other worlds within Upper Trellshire, the Orchestra moved like lightning to secure government offices and military facilities. The sparks Lyran intelligence dismissed as tinkerers and toymakers had equipped their fellow revolutionaries with many clever and useful devices, along with a small army's worth of truly terrifying weaponry. Among these weapons was Chomolungma, one of the first SparkMechs, hammered together in Nicholas Wulfenbach's machine shop and which successfully destroyed the entire mercenary company working for Duke Wilfrid. Lyran forces, caught off-guard by the strength and spread of the rebellion and understrength in general thanks to the Archon's planned war, toppled again and again across Trellshire. Within weeks a motley collection of allies and opportunists emerged from the mists, seeing that a Great House was, for the first time in centuries, truly vulnerable. The Lyran republican movement Democracy Now began strike actions on Lyran core worlds, surging in popularity as the Alessandro's government flailed helplessly and the symphonists established governments on their worlds, proving that this wasn't a formless mass of angry peasants with shiny toys.
The symphonists' supporters within ComStar proved to be one of the most vital parts of the revolution to come. By 3001 Prometheanism had low-key spread through the Order's lower ranks, to the point where almost half of its initiates had at least some Promethean sympathy. This – critically – included the main operators of the hyper-pulse generator (HPG) network, those who controlled the means of interstellar communications. Revolutionary messages of support, requests and instructions to symphonist groups across Lyran space and the Inner Sphere beyond received priority over House orders to various units. While the distribution of Prometheans was by no means uniform, it was enough to throw counterrevolutionary efforts into complete chaos pretty much everywhere. Spurred on by Promethean aid, the mercenary company / underground dissident movement the Iron Flower Brigade hoisted symphonist green-and-gold and declared the Federation of the Dawn Society on the Draconis Combine world Rubigen. As the Iron Flowers' SparkMechs battled against the Combine's military, it became very clear that the symphonists weren't a localized revolt – this was spreading across House borders, and quickly.
It would be (to date) the last big war in the Inner Sphere. The most common name for the symphonist revolution is the Great Revolt, because in large part that was what it was: a series of revolts against the local, regional or House rulers that happened everywhere more or less all at once. The Great Houses were all caught flatfooted by the Revolt – expecting unruly peasants who could be suppressed or easily bought off because nothing mattered, none of them were prepared to handle large groups of highly-motivated people for whom things actually mattered. Armies mobilized and populations suppressed, but thanks to the Prometheans in ComStar revolution spread faster than counterrevolution and things began to turn against the Houses in earnest.
Of the five Great Houses, three would be shattered by the Revolt:
The Federated Suns underwent a pretty radical reorganization. In order to prevent their realm from collapsing like the Kuritas and Liaos, being reduced to figureheads like the Mariks or simply being overthrown like the Steiners, House Davion went on a huge bribery spree aimed at its own citizens. First Prince Ian Davion, at the suggestion of his brother and court spark Prince Hanse, invested as much as he dared in the poorer worlds of his domain (of which it turned out there were a lot) in order to bring them closer to the wealthier worlds like the capital at New Avalon. He was too late to stop the symphonists from peeling away the duchies of Filtvelt and Anjin Muerto into the Filtvelt Coaltion, or to prevent the Reunified Worlds, taken from the Concordat four centuries prior, from declaring independence as the Pleiadan Unity. But overall Hanse's strategy worked: symphonist sentiment was blunted and redirected as positive feeling towards New Avalon. With no real competition left, the Davion brothers seized the moment to declare themselves the winners of the Succession Wars, and in 3010 the Federated Suns became the New Star League.
In the meantime, the Order of ComStar went through its own crisis, as the Prometheans effectively rebelled against the First Circuit and their Karpovite orthodoxy. This started as a war of words but quickly escalated into actual war as Karpovite and Promethean threw down in what we call the Blakist Reformation these days. The war was remarkably even-sided, as the main fighters ended up being ComStar's internal security/intelligence force ROM, who were split down the middle between Promethan and Karpovite. In the end though the Prometheans triumphed thanks to a few high-level members on Old Earth like Vesar Kristofur, and the First Circuit fled the Inner Sphere to the distant outpost of Epsilon Pegasus to lick their wounds and regroup, while the Prometheans and other non-Karpovite Blakists took up the duty of maintaining the vital HPG network.
History happens.
It is end of the year 3019, Terran Synchronized Calendar. The Inner Sphere, once divided between five kings, is split into dozens of smaller nations. The map is dominated by the symphonist Orchestra, the monarchist New League and between them the Free Worlds League, a nation with a foot in both yet beholden to neither. The Ryu no Sengoku continues to smolder, as the five Shoguns struggle to see who will finally take Luthien away from the Last Kurita, while the independent states and worlds surrounding them watch nervously. In the heart of the Inner Sphere the kingdoms of Dieron, Northwind and Summer compete to see who will win the throne of House Cameron upon Old Earth, counterbalanced by the (semi-)democratic Terran Alliance and Aldeberan Congressional Republic.
All around the Inner Sphere sparks continue to pop up and add their own unique spice to galactic affairs. Sometimes they're stable enough to conquer a world and a spark kingdom comes into existence. Sometimes they aren't and… things happen. When things happen somebody needs to go in and clean up, or cover up, or just loot the bodies before the fun stuff degrades too much; these people are adventurers, professionals who make their living dealing with spark-driven or spark-related nonsense. As the traditional mercenary economy in the Inner Sphere dries up (Turns out most nations prefer their own armies run by patriotic citizens or subjects, who woulda thunk it?) the adventurer market booms, with plenty of lucrative options for those willing to talk about media licensing. Patrons for adventurers abound, from small-world nobility to megacorporations to large groups like the Aeon Foundation.
The established Periphery Houses watch all of this madness nervously, trying to keep their own sparks contained and worrying that they're going to be next on the chopping block. Already House Avellar has lost half of the Outworlds Alliance to symphonist and republican revolution and is likely going to be trapped into an "alliance" with the New League in short order. House Calderon has begun looking outwards to the mysterious nations of the Outer Sphere for allies, while House Centrella finds itself in a cold war with House Boudicca, an upstart Spark House that conquered the neo-Roman Marian Hegemony and now threatens to pull the smaller nations of the southwest Periphery under its banner.
Mad scientists rule worlds, at least no worse and sometimes even better than the feudal lords they overthrew. Ancient and terrible secrets of the past, like the traces of a hidden war on Old Earth in the late 20th century, or the enigmatic Aurora sites, are being dug up and dragged into the light of day. It seems like half the galaxy is anticipating – with dread or joy – the Good War, the final conflict where the symphonists, monarchists, sparks and mundanes will settle the question of who has the right to rule once and for all time. The Inner Sphere is in a state of great uncertainty, nobody's entirely sure what the hell is going anymore and everyone is looking for a new way forward.
...and on a distant outpost a few hundred light years coreward of the Inner Sphere, Star Colonel Jaime of Clan Wolf tugs on his collar nervously and shuffles his briefing notes as the HPG transmitter locks on and accepts the transmission call from Strana Mechty. The assembled Khans of the Clans of Kerensky really want to know what the hell is going on in the Inner Sphere, because it's starting to spread well outside of their control and they need to figure out how to fix it before things get worse.
IT IS A GALAXY RULED BY MAD SCIENCE~!right-click for big said:
Poorly.
Though let's be fair: the previous landlords weren't exactly a great bunch of guys either. By the beginning of the 24th century a combination of social and ideological forces had fused together late 20th century neoliberalism with a romanticized version of medieval European feudalism. This was not a good thing, but it was just stable enough to persist despite the fact that all these new little despots had no problems whatsoever chucking nuclear weapons at each other without much provocation. And so the last few centuries have been one long conga line of war, colonialism, revanchism and other things that've made the galaxy a pretty shitty place to live in. But then the mad scientists showed up and, well, it does say something that direct rule by freakin' wizards often sounds like a better deal than rule by a feudal overlord in a giant robot.
So (as the ancient philosopher would say) what is the deal with these mad scientists? Well, that is in itself a long story.
To the best of our knowledge, Science-Related Memetic Disorder (or like most people call it, The Spark) has been around to one extent or another since the very beginning. (Possibly even earlier, as archaeologists keep digging up strange and uncanny nonsense that suggests the deep history of humanity doesn't start at a bunch of cave paintings – but I digress.) We don't know where the spark comes from or how it works; theories abound (naturally) and we know a few things, like how it seems to have a genetic component – sparks are more likely to have sparky children, etc. – but that's about it. The spark seems to have been relatively rare through recorded history, the few recorded sparks only existing on the fringes of human society for the most part. Only sparks of remarkable strength like Tesla, Edison and Helsingard managed to make any sort of notable dent in the historical record in the 20th century. The last person in the historical record we can point to and say "this was a spark" with any degree of confidence was R. van Rijn, the last science minister of the Old Star League and a subject of great mystery. But sparks like these – hell, sparks of any strength whatsoever – were rarities. Sparks were a one in a hundred billion outliers compared to the rest of humanity.
But then something happened and things changed. Nobody knows what, though the handful of people who've investigated the issue think it has something to do with the experiments of Sir Calvin Hammersmith, a scientist in the Federated Suns who poked at the structure of hyperspace until it poked back. A few people, usually dismissed as swivel-eyed lunatics by everybody else, blame one of the (surprisingly large number of) secret societies currently loose in the galaxy today, like the Order of the Illuminati or the Resurgent Knights of the Synarchic Temple. The most boring scientists suggest that it's just a weird quirk of large numbers, that the overall population is just big enough now that we're finally starting to notice. Ultimately the exact mechanism isn't important – at the moment – the point is that in 2970 there were maybe a dozen sparks of noticeable strength out of an estimated population in the low trillions, and in 2976 sparks started coming out of the woodwork in record numbers. While still a tiny fraction of the population these new sparks were stronger on average than most others, which meant that their creations were also way more visible to the general public. It is also known that sparks tend to gravitate towards each other, and when they meet they may collaborate or argue, and sparks are often known for having astonishing ego problems. So even a few thousand sparks distributed randomly across the whole of the Inner Sphere is more than enough to start making waves.
And boy did they ever.
Let's roll back to the previous landlords. As noted, the galaxy was ruled by a medievalist neoliberalism that was called in academic circles neofeudalism. The particulars aren't incredibly important and will be covered elsewhere in greater detail; suffice to say that the whole thing was designed to maintain the wealth and power of the people who bought in first with as little disruption to the status quo as humanly possible. The original neofeudal leaders – men and women whose legacy were the Great and Minor Houses of the Inner Sphere – were successful capitalists and/or pirates (the distinction is often academic) of the early interstellar age who managed to secure control over the colonies as the last vestiges of the previous neoliberal order decayed into neofeudalism. As they were often the only ones with the resources needed to buy or build weapons, the Houses evolved into warlords, ruling strictly via bigger-army diplomacy. And as an insurance policy, the Houses spent generations depoliticizing their subjects, convincing them that there really wasn't much point caring about which flag flew over which planet (this was untrue), that there wasn't much difference between Houses (this was both hilariously untrue and far, far truer than the Houses were comfortable admitting) and that wasn't much of a future, just the now going on forever and ever. (We'll get back to that.)
It didn't hurt the Houses that technological advances in warfare continued apace, always leaving the best and most effective toys in the hands of those with the money, time and resources to manufacture them – which were naturally the Houses. By the 25th century the neofeudal order reached its ultimate expression in the mighty (if somewhat silly) BattleMech, bipedal weapons platforms that allowed the Houses to concentrate literal military power in the hands of a smaller elite corps, creating the military caste needed to seal neofeudalism's power forever. Through neofeudalism and BattleMechs the Houses built the Old Star League, tore down the Old League in the Amaris War and the Succession Wars, and generally squabbled amongst themselves, secure in the knowledge that nothing mattered except the now, and nobody would – or could – stop them.
Then things started mattering again, and the whole galaxy went topsy-turvy. The resurgence of the spark in the 2970s was definitely a catalyst for what came next, as it was something that the neofeudal lords of the Inner Sphere, fluent in the language of violence but not a whole lot else, weren't really equipped to handle. At first, sparks tended to be singular eccentrics that could be co-opted or destroyed by the powers that be. This is the age where the Spark Houses are established in places like the Federated Suns and Free Worlds League, a new class of nobility where sparks of sufficient ability could establish themselves as court wizards to the existing Houses. Names of more recent infamy such as Vapnoople, von Blitzengaard, Sun, Mongfish, Banzai, Richter, Monahan and Shaburova were part of this initial wave of sparks, joining together with the local nobility and becoming part of the system. In theory this assimilation could have continued, much in the same way that the hyperrich capitalist class of the 21st and 22nd centuries were absorbed into the neofeudal order of the 24th. Unfortunately – for neofeudalism at least – the sparks kept coming at all levels of class and caste strata in the Inner Sphere, not all of them were willing to yoke themselves to non-spark rulers and almost every single one was prouder than the Devil himself.
As sparks kept popping up, so did instability within the Successor States. In the first generation or so between the resurgence and the beginning of the 31st century things didn't pop off in any large way. While sparks kept showing up, causing a ruckus and occasionally knocking over continental or planetary Houses, their ambitions tended to stop there and so long as the taxes kept flowing to the capitals the Great Houses weren't terribly worried. While the amount of Minor House churn had increased a bit, it was still within historical norms for the Succession Wars and it was easy enough to pretend that everything was completely under control. (Spoiler alert: it wasn't.) By the turn of the next century things were starting to reach a tipping point. Not only had spark shenanigans started to become more visible to the greater galaxy – the infamous penny sparklie first appears in the 2990s – it was also becoming more and more clear to the intelligentsia that the neofeudal Houses were starting to strain under keeping all of this nonsense under their thumb. Sensing weakness, people started straining against the system looking for the breakpoints, and also began putting together plans for what came next.
One of these people was a young spark by the name of Sarah Demetriou, a conflict orphan of the Third Succession War (2866 – 3001) who had been taken in by the Order of ComStar in the 2980s. Sarah turned out to be a strong spark, particularly charismatic and – extremely rare in sparks – focused mainly on mad social science. With access to ComStar's extensive library she was able to mine the past for inspiration, looking for something that might provide a base of stability instead of the looming apocalyptic war between spark and noble that would likely fragment the Inner Sphere beyond all previous reckoning. In the end she devised a system that mobilized the galaxy's lower classes, provided them with the tools necessary to maintain a far more equitable order and build a more sustainable prosperity across interstellar ranges. Sarah called this form of democratic socialism symphonic socialism or simply symphonism. As a second-order effect of her initial proselytizing within ComStar's ranks, she also was the claimed founder of a new form of Blakist religious doctrine, where instead of waiting for the Houses to batter themselves into extinction ComStar would support regime change when the people of the Inner Sphere moved.
This new Blakist sect, dubbed Prometheanism, spread quickly through ComStar's lower ranks. Many Blakists within the Order at the turn of the century had no love for the Houses but also saw more of the harm done by ComStar's inaction during the Succession Wars. Even those who were not Promethean or Blakist in general ended up drawn into Sarah's orbit, including her fellow spark and longtime confidant Nicholas Wulfenbach. Wulfenbach, also an orphan who ended up in ComStar in the 2980s, immediately saw the potential of symphonism and the pair started drafting plans that could see a strong symphonist movement emerging as a counterbalance to the spark/nobility conflict. This drew the attention of ComStar's elders. Most of the upper hierarchy were orthodox Blakists or Karpovites, who followed a doctrine that the Houses needed to be destroyed and replaced by ComStar as the sole hegemon of the Inner Sphere. Prometheanism/symphonism and Karpovite ideology were inherently hostile, and Demetriou's intelligence and charisma made her a threat to the Order's current power structure. Unable to co-opt her and leery of killing her for fear of creating an internal martyr, the First Circuit ordered Demetriou, Wulfenbach and a handful of her most devoted disciples exiled to the distant backwater world Somerset in 2993.
In years to come, those members of the First Circuit who survived the next fifteen years would call the decision to exile the symphonists instead of doing something – anything – else with them the single biggest mistake ComStar ever made. Because dismissing sparks, even ones as even-tempered as Sarah Demetriou and Nicholas Wulfenbach, as not worth the effort to oppose is a very dangerous proposition. They had been proverbially laughed out of the academy, and now they were going to show them all.
Seven years after ComStar exiled a pair of sparks and their followers to the fringe Lyran Commonwealth world of Somerset, an underground movement of liberals, socialists, anarchists and other undesirables known as the Green Orchestra emerged from the shadows in the most dramatic political maneuver since old Stefan Amaris killed the last First Lord of the Old League and set the Succession Wars in motion. The Commonwealth had known that the Orchestra existed beforehand, but hadn't taken them all that seriously. Sparks with egos were a dime a dozen by 3001, and the movement hadn't really seemed all that dangerous. At first glance, it was an alliance of idealistic students with more heart than brain and backwoods peasants, none of who were familiar with the "real world" of House politics and backed by a handful of tinkerers and toymakers. None of them seemed to have significant foreign backing, and eccentrics obsessed with crude 21st century tech like solar panels weren't building BattleMechs or any weapons of import. So far as Loki and other Lyran spymasters were concerned, the Orchestra wasn't worth the energy needed to subvert or break. Archon Alessandro Steiner had more important things to worry about at the time; he was building forces for his last great attempt to break the Free Worlds League, and anything that could've distracted from that was happily circular-filed. In years to come Alessandro's tunnel vision would be decried by reactionaries across the Inner Sphere as "the blindness that killed empires, friend and foe alike," but it's hard to be too mad at the Archon for this – the Orchestra concealed itself very well.
In the end, things moved before the revolutionary vanguard was truly ready. The then-reigning Duke of Somerset was Wilfrid Steiner, a cousin of the main royal line, technical governor of the half-dozen or so worlds within jump range of Somerset and painfully insecure of his position. Under pressure from the native Cornish clans and fearing replacement by Tharkad, Duke Wilfrid began enforcing a crackdown on "rebellious behavior." On 1 February 3001 an otherwise-peaceful protest against the duke's heavy-handed actions was broken up by ducal security forces and mercenary BattleMechs. In the chaos, members of the Orchestra moved to protect the protesters and bystanders, partially revealing the movement to the government. Demetriou and Wulfenbach would have preferred to have another couple years preparing and spreading symphonist doctrine around, but the duke forced their hand. Wildcat strikes led by symphonists in solidarity with the Somserset protesters began the day after the protest, and after two weeks of rising tensions the Orchestra moved into open revolutionary conflict on 14 February, an act that would forever be known as the Valentine Rising.
On Somerset and a dozen other worlds within Upper Trellshire, the Orchestra moved like lightning to secure government offices and military facilities. The sparks Lyran intelligence dismissed as tinkerers and toymakers had equipped their fellow revolutionaries with many clever and useful devices, along with a small army's worth of truly terrifying weaponry. Among these weapons was Chomolungma, one of the first SparkMechs, hammered together in Nicholas Wulfenbach's machine shop and which successfully destroyed the entire mercenary company working for Duke Wilfrid. Lyran forces, caught off-guard by the strength and spread of the rebellion and understrength in general thanks to the Archon's planned war, toppled again and again across Trellshire. Within weeks a motley collection of allies and opportunists emerged from the mists, seeing that a Great House was, for the first time in centuries, truly vulnerable. The Lyran republican movement Democracy Now began strike actions on Lyran core worlds, surging in popularity as the Alessandro's government flailed helplessly and the symphonists established governments on their worlds, proving that this wasn't a formless mass of angry peasants with shiny toys.
The symphonists' supporters within ComStar proved to be one of the most vital parts of the revolution to come. By 3001 Prometheanism had low-key spread through the Order's lower ranks, to the point where almost half of its initiates had at least some Promethean sympathy. This – critically – included the main operators of the hyper-pulse generator (HPG) network, those who controlled the means of interstellar communications. Revolutionary messages of support, requests and instructions to symphonist groups across Lyran space and the Inner Sphere beyond received priority over House orders to various units. While the distribution of Prometheans was by no means uniform, it was enough to throw counterrevolutionary efforts into complete chaos pretty much everywhere. Spurred on by Promethean aid, the mercenary company / underground dissident movement the Iron Flower Brigade hoisted symphonist green-and-gold and declared the Federation of the Dawn Society on the Draconis Combine world Rubigen. As the Iron Flowers' SparkMechs battled against the Combine's military, it became very clear that the symphonists weren't a localized revolt – this was spreading across House borders, and quickly.
It would be (to date) the last big war in the Inner Sphere. The most common name for the symphonist revolution is the Great Revolt, because in large part that was what it was: a series of revolts against the local, regional or House rulers that happened everywhere more or less all at once. The Great Houses were all caught flatfooted by the Revolt – expecting unruly peasants who could be suppressed or easily bought off because nothing mattered, none of them were prepared to handle large groups of highly-motivated people for whom things actually mattered. Armies mobilized and populations suppressed, but thanks to the Prometheans in ComStar revolution spread faster than counterrevolution and things began to turn against the Houses in earnest.
Of the five Great Houses, three would be shattered by the Revolt:
- Alessandro Steiner would cling to power for too long, unwilling to give up his ambitions or his throne, until in 3005 the Estates-General finally turned against him, deposed the Archon and sued for peace with the Orchestra separately. Alessandro and a small court of sympathizers and reactionaries eventually found a home in the Taurian Concordat while House Steiner's many members found a refuge in internal exile on the planet Arc-Royal.
- House Kurita acted against the rebellion with their signature brutality, killing hundreds of thousands along the Lyran border in a failed attempt to "contain the infection." When the Free Rasalhague Republic was declared, the whole force of the Combine was thrown against them to prevent the Rasalhagi from seceding, only to break in the Year of Four Coordinators (3006), when three Kuritan monarchs, Hohiro, Takashi and Marcus died on the Rasalhagi front lines. With a child now on the Dragon's throne the Combine was effectively headless and acted appropriately, disintegrating into dozens of independent systems and a handful of Shogunates attempting to claim the throne for themselves.
- House Liao had a chance to survive the storm of symphonism – Chancellor Maximilian Liao was a man prone to convoluted plotting but was also capable of ruthless pragmatism – but it was a spark who proved his ultimate downfall. The capture of Tikonov during the Revolt by a spark calling himself the Titanium Duke triggered an economic and political crisis that the Capellan Confederation couldn't withstand. With much of the Capellan north lost to the Titanium Duke or competing Lesser Houses sensing weakness, and the St. Ives Commonality lost to a symphonist revolt, Maximilian threw himself from the highest tower in the Forbidden City, leaving a shattered rump Confederation to his eldest daughter Candace.
The Federated Suns underwent a pretty radical reorganization. In order to prevent their realm from collapsing like the Kuritas and Liaos, being reduced to figureheads like the Mariks or simply being overthrown like the Steiners, House Davion went on a huge bribery spree aimed at its own citizens. First Prince Ian Davion, at the suggestion of his brother and court spark Prince Hanse, invested as much as he dared in the poorer worlds of his domain (of which it turned out there were a lot) in order to bring them closer to the wealthier worlds like the capital at New Avalon. He was too late to stop the symphonists from peeling away the duchies of Filtvelt and Anjin Muerto into the Filtvelt Coaltion, or to prevent the Reunified Worlds, taken from the Concordat four centuries prior, from declaring independence as the Pleiadan Unity. But overall Hanse's strategy worked: symphonist sentiment was blunted and redirected as positive feeling towards New Avalon. With no real competition left, the Davion brothers seized the moment to declare themselves the winners of the Succession Wars, and in 3010 the Federated Suns became the New Star League.
In the meantime, the Order of ComStar went through its own crisis, as the Prometheans effectively rebelled against the First Circuit and their Karpovite orthodoxy. This started as a war of words but quickly escalated into actual war as Karpovite and Promethean threw down in what we call the Blakist Reformation these days. The war was remarkably even-sided, as the main fighters ended up being ComStar's internal security/intelligence force ROM, who were split down the middle between Promethan and Karpovite. In the end though the Prometheans triumphed thanks to a few high-level members on Old Earth like Vesar Kristofur, and the First Circuit fled the Inner Sphere to the distant outpost of Epsilon Pegasus to lick their wounds and regroup, while the Prometheans and other non-Karpovite Blakists took up the duty of maintaining the vital HPG network.
History happens.
It is end of the year 3019, Terran Synchronized Calendar. The Inner Sphere, once divided between five kings, is split into dozens of smaller nations. The map is dominated by the symphonist Orchestra, the monarchist New League and between them the Free Worlds League, a nation with a foot in both yet beholden to neither. The Ryu no Sengoku continues to smolder, as the five Shoguns struggle to see who will finally take Luthien away from the Last Kurita, while the independent states and worlds surrounding them watch nervously. In the heart of the Inner Sphere the kingdoms of Dieron, Northwind and Summer compete to see who will win the throne of House Cameron upon Old Earth, counterbalanced by the (semi-)democratic Terran Alliance and Aldeberan Congressional Republic.
All around the Inner Sphere sparks continue to pop up and add their own unique spice to galactic affairs. Sometimes they're stable enough to conquer a world and a spark kingdom comes into existence. Sometimes they aren't and… things happen. When things happen somebody needs to go in and clean up, or cover up, or just loot the bodies before the fun stuff degrades too much; these people are adventurers, professionals who make their living dealing with spark-driven or spark-related nonsense. As the traditional mercenary economy in the Inner Sphere dries up (Turns out most nations prefer their own armies run by patriotic citizens or subjects, who woulda thunk it?) the adventurer market booms, with plenty of lucrative options for those willing to talk about media licensing. Patrons for adventurers abound, from small-world nobility to megacorporations to large groups like the Aeon Foundation.
The established Periphery Houses watch all of this madness nervously, trying to keep their own sparks contained and worrying that they're going to be next on the chopping block. Already House Avellar has lost half of the Outworlds Alliance to symphonist and republican revolution and is likely going to be trapped into an "alliance" with the New League in short order. House Calderon has begun looking outwards to the mysterious nations of the Outer Sphere for allies, while House Centrella finds itself in a cold war with House Boudicca, an upstart Spark House that conquered the neo-Roman Marian Hegemony and now threatens to pull the smaller nations of the southwest Periphery under its banner.
Mad scientists rule worlds, at least no worse and sometimes even better than the feudal lords they overthrew. Ancient and terrible secrets of the past, like the traces of a hidden war on Old Earth in the late 20th century, or the enigmatic Aurora sites, are being dug up and dragged into the light of day. It seems like half the galaxy is anticipating – with dread or joy – the Good War, the final conflict where the symphonists, monarchists, sparks and mundanes will settle the question of who has the right to rule once and for all time. The Inner Sphere is in a state of great uncertainty, nobody's entirely sure what the hell is going anymore and everyone is looking for a new way forward.
...and on a distant outpost a few hundred light years coreward of the Inner Sphere, Star Colonel Jaime of Clan Wolf tugs on his collar nervously and shuffles his briefing notes as the HPG transmitter locks on and accepts the transmission call from Strana Mechty. The assembled Khans of the Clans of Kerensky really want to know what the hell is going on in the Inner Sphere, because it's starting to spread well outside of their control and they need to figure out how to fix it before things get worse.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I see that the IBO managed to sneak into the narrative.
Very nice. Have one (1) validation.
Very nice. Have one (1) validation.
CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
Lovely map, and it's interesting to see how the Free Worlds League has changed compared to previous versions, with a peaceful transition to a UK-style mostly-neutered monarchy setup instead of the Space English Civil War. I do have a pair of small notes to bring up, though: first, I can't seem to find Point 61 on the map? Is this just me being blind? And also the Pleiadan Unity doesn't seem to be listed in the legend anywhere.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
61 is Niops, so you're looking at the wrong end of the map most likely.
Right in between the FWL and the Iceni.
I'm also going to note that DO NOT APPROACH is sparingly used.
Tortuga - looted and bombed out... But esoteric hazards?
The Duxfort superorganism - which, okay, reasonable.
And an Aurora site up on the outer edge of the Rift Republic - is that Finmark?
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CrabMonarchy
Allegedly Dutch
- Location
- the Netherlands, apparently
Ah, I see. I did think of Niops, but I misremembered its location as closer to the FWL/Canopus border. Thanks!
Aztez Fan
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- California
Nice rework, i cant wait to see how everyone outside the sphere is doing, if some clans fair better then others (Im looking at you Blood spirits, ghost bear and Diamond shark!), and how what amounts to the most chill part of the galaxy around the Axumites is doing effectively vibing in "No major upset in 800 years" club. Of course you got the crazy Califonia Neblua folks lurking around. Potential aliens of the War od the Worlds vary in their tri pods. And bird people.
Yet through it all things have the potential to be better, just hope no Dictators playing petty nobility mess things further for the moments of the sphere.
Yet through it all things have the potential to be better, just hope no Dictators playing petty nobility mess things further for the moments of the sphere.
Mal-3
Fun Tyrant
Barbatos is way too much evil space magic to not end up in a sparky setting.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEjWTDEkMaY
...*sigh* One more for the failure column, apparently. Oh well.
The Do Not Approach icon could stand to be used a bit more - there's a couple places on the map that ought to be tagged as such (like the one Hidden World where the IIRC the Wobbies got all their fun bioweapons) but the main problem becomes one of overlapping icons. So in the interests of map clarity stuff got cut out.
As for Tortuga, shit got wild in a way that most of the strike force didn't expect. This may be covered in a Natasha Kerensky Adventure[tm] that is is partially written but may end up nuked and heavily revised.
And yes, that's Finmark out on the edge of the RR. Nuked into oblivion, as per canon.
The Outer Sphere may be the subject of another map, but probably not for a while. There've been a lot of renovations in that region.
Let me guess. Just because the edge of the map has "here there be dragons" on it, doesn't mean the dragons will stay on their side of the map.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
The question is then not only 'How many dragons are there?' but also 'How many different types of dangerous dragons are there?'
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Considering the State of the Combine, this is a relevant phrasing.
Mal-3
Fun Tyrant
Human space is quite a bit larger than previously thought, and the fringes are considerably more fey. That said, it's not like everywhere doesn't have its own troubles.
You going to use that 4,000 ly map you showed us over on SB?
Mal-3
Fun Tyrant
Thinking about it. I might end up putting together a more bespoke version just to say that I did. Haven't really decided as yet - still a lot of shit to work out.
Aztez Fan
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- California
The scary part here is that baring say the SL or Clans eating up the shoguns, its only a matter of time before one of them pulls an Hideyoshi on some random ass world of say idk Nirasaki or some other world and Deposes all the Warlords becoming head Warlord. WIth black jack and Ghisas! Plus maybe a Senate for the lols.
The implications of the Aurora sites should prove interesting.
Because if humanity once had an ancient interstellar civilization, what happened to it? And can they avoid the mistakes which led to the first Fall? All this and more is going to have implications because of the churn on both the micro- and macro-scale.
Aztez Fan
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- California
I supect something weirder, as i wasnt joking about the Tri-pods earlier, as their is a War of the worlds book that had two ways of going about it. That being the Tri-Pods are really a ROS projects to scare people into giving up their weapons to the government. Or are legit mysterious aliens who suspiciously would be in the area the Aurora sights are located? Which would make one wonder just how alien they really are.
Personally i just want something fun with Bird people as an april fools thing showing them go from their relatively primitive state to reverse engineering the tech in their system over the course of 400 years. With one jump ship with some mechs repairing the Sphere incognito as Spark creations, when the reality is their aliens.
Personally i just want something fun with Bird people as an april fools thing showing them go from their relatively primitive state to reverse engineering the tech in their system over the course of 400 years. With one jump ship with some mechs repairing the Sphere incognito as Spark creations, when the reality is their aliens.
Perhaps the Minnesota Tribe could simultaneously be part of the Blood as Chandy fabricated in OTL and part of the Union of Sovereign Republics due to splitting up to increase chances of survival?
I had 10 percent of an idea where the WOB Jihad ran from 3049 to 3052 while the Clan Invasion ran from 3067 to 3081.
The reason the Clan Invasion ran so long was that all of the Clans Invaded, No-Compromise style.
The reason the Clan Invasion ran so long was that all of the Clans Invaded, No-Compromise style.
The secondary reason is that when they found out about the Jihad, all 20 of the Clans were doing the invading, with massively expanded Toumans.
That's right.
Wolverine, Widowmaker, and Mongoose were still around.
That's right.
Wolverine, Widowmaker, and Mongoose were still around.