Field Manual: Royal Federation (BattleTech Concertverse AU Sourcebook)

[Steve]

Some of this material was already posted in the story thread for "Emergence". Since that story's done I figured I'd compile things in a new thread with the appropriate sourcebook presentation. Because I am a nerd. This includes some new (if briefer) fluff accounts of events in this timeline. Very broad, in line with how the original Field Manual sourcebooks explored background history, but with a different focus than Special Era Report 3142.

I am still sprucing up and filling out fluff for the FM presentation, but I'll gradually post more as it's done or as I get the energy to format or what have you.

Table of Contents​

For Freedom and Federation

Introduction

Phoenix Rising

Where Giants Meet
The Collapse
The Liberator
The Arcadian Free March
War and Reformation
A Bittersweet Peace ​

The Hawk's Talons

The Chain of Command ​

The Crown
The Privy Council
Parliament
The Command Staff ​

Departments of the AFRF
Federation Office of Intelligence and Security
Marches and Theaters
AFRF Structure and Doctrine ​

Force Composition​

BattleMech Units
Armored and Vehicle Units
Infantry Units
Aerospace Units​

Army Combat Commands
Federal Militia
Planetary Militia
Navy Combat Groups
Aerospace Combat Commands
AFRF Unit Organization Tables
Mercenary Companies ​

AFRF Uniforms
AFRF Rank Structure ​

Enlisted Ranks
Non-Commissioned Officers
Commissioned Officers
General Officers ​

The Call of Service

Basic Recruitment and Education
Higher Education ​

Ayrshire Military Sciences Academy
The Nagelring
Sanglamore
Atrean Military Academy
Tamarind Military Institute
Rivka Shaltiel Flight Academy
Raquel Steiner Memorial Academy
Defiance Industries Military Academy
Defiance Armored Combat School
Alarion Naval Academy
AFS Independence Naval Aerospace School
Royal Infantry Officer College
George S. Patton Jr. School of Mechanized Warfare ​

Commendations and Awards of the Royal Federation

AFRF Rosters

Equipment Ratings
Unit Identification Table ​

The Realm's Finest: The Royal Guards ​

1st Royal Guards: Defenders of the Dream
2nd Royal Guards: Keepers of the Faith
3rd Royal Guards: Guardians of the Realm ​

The Crown's Own: The Household Guards ​

The Lifeguards: Shields of the Crown
Proctor Light Horse: Dare To Defend
Proctor Assault Guards: The Hammers of Liberation
Proctor Heavy Guards: Swords of the Proctors
1st Proctor Guards: The Chain-Breakers
2nd Proctor Guards: The Hawk-sworn
3rd Proctor Guards: Dragonslayers ​

Fast and Furious: The Striker Corps ​

2nd Strikers: Ghost Killers
5th Strikers: Death Scythes
8th Strikers: Sunhawks
10th Strikers: Nighthunters ​

All The Way: The Ranger Brigades ​

Arcadian Rangers: The Liberator's Own
Bolan Rangers: Death from Above
Tamarind Rangers: The Tenacious Third
Alarion Rangers: Hunters on the Rim
Donegal Rangers: Straightshooters
Tharkad Rangers: Ethan's Hounds​

Rolling Thunder: The Royal Cuirassiers ​

1st Royal Cuirassiers: The Undaunted
2nd Royal Cuirassiers: Heavy Metal
3rd Royal Cuirassiers: Terra's Bane ​

The Thin Red Line: The Royal BattleMech Regiments ​

1st Royal BattleMech Regiment: First In, Last Out
2nd Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Iron Wall
3rd Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Comeback Kings
4th Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Shiny Ones
5th Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Battling Bastards
6th Royal BattleMech Regiment: Shock and Awe
7th Royal BattleMech Regiment: Unlucky Number Seven
8th Royal BattleMech Regiment: Pieces of Eight
9th Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Mounted Rifles
10th Royal BattleMech Regiment: Hesperan Excellence
11th Royal BattleMech Regiment: Snake Eyes
12th Royal BattleMech Regiment: The Vengeful ​

The Crown's Fist: The Royal Assault Brigade​

1st Royal Assault Regiment: Metal Rain
2nd Royal Assault Regiment: Crushing Fury
4th Royal Assault Regiment: The Rose Tramplers
8th Royal Assault Regiment: Warhammers
10th Royal Assault Regiment: The Crown's Maul​

Fearless Chargers: The Royal Lancer Corps ​

1st Royal Lancers: Death or Glory
2nd Royal (Irish) Lancers: Clear the Way!
4th Royal Lancers: The Queen's Own
5th Royal (Irish) Lancers: Pride of Erin
7th Royal Lancers: The Blades of Donegal​

Ever Ready: Brigade of Dragoons ​

1st Dragoons: First to Fight
2nd Dragoons: The Misfits
3rd Dragoons: Gloryhounds
4th Dragoons: Dirty Work
5th Dragoons: The Furious Fifth
6th Dragoons: Hexagon
7th Dragoons: The Magnificent Seventh
8th Dragoons: The Cutthroats
9th Dragoons: The Lion Tamers
10th Dragoons: Legions' Bane ​

Start of a Tradition: The Free March Corps

Arcadian Guards: Pride of the Free
Gienah Heavy Fusiliers: Sentinels of Hope
Hyde Lancers: Always Steadfast
1st Launum Armored Cavalry: ¡Viva Launumeños!
1st Free March Cavalry Brigade: E Pluribus Unum ​

Túatha Dé Danann: Donegal Guards ​

2nd Donegal Guards: The Unwearied Second
4th Donegal Guards: The Resolute Fourth
6th Donegal Guards: White Hawks
8th Donegal Guards: The Gentlemen
13th Donegal Guards: Black Cats
14th Donegal Guards: The Dawnchargers ​

The Swift and the Brave: Donegal Cavalry ​

2nd Donegal Cavalry: The Sure Second
3rd Donegal Cavalry: Lightning Bolts
4th Donegal Cavalry: The Red Wind
6th Donegal Cavalry: Riders of the Steppes ​

The Pride of Atreus: Atrean Dragoons ​

1st Atrean Dragoons: Rising Eagles
3rd Atrean Dragoons: Pillars of Strength
5th Atrean Dragoons: Devastation
7th Atrean Dragoons: Eagle's Flight ​

The Eagle's Claws: Marik Regulars ​

1st Marik Regulars: The Eagle's Shield
2nd Marik Regulars: The Prince's Sword
4th Marik Regulars: Pride of Bainsville ​

Bravehearts: Skye Rangers ​

4th Skye Rangers: Albion
8th Skye Rangers: Eradicators
10th Skye Rangers: The Black Watch
11th Skye Rangers: Guardians of Skye
17th Skye Rangers: The Boys of Summer ​

Fresh Start: The Wraiths ​

1st Wraiths: Pride of Exiles
2nd Wraiths: Jungle Prowlers
3rd Wraiths: The Legionnaires ​

Holy Warriors: The Dar-es-Salaam Cavalry ​

1st Dar-es-Salaam Cavalry: The Sword of the Faithful
2nd Dar-es-Salaam Cavalry: Shadows in the Desert
4th Dar-es-Salaam Cavalry: The Amir's Chosen ​

Call of the Kshatriya: The Bolan Corps ​

Bolan Heavy Guards: Strength of the Umayrs
Bolan Hussars: The Defiant Ones
Bolan Cavalry: Legacy of the Marathi
1st Bolan Regulars: The Unbroken
2nd Bolan Regulars: Defiant Hope ​

Remnant Pride: The Tamarind Guards ​

2nd Tamarind Guards: The River Watch
3rd Tamarind Guards: Drawn Sabers ​

Diverse Strength: The Independent Regiments ​

Concord Borderers: Liberty for All
Brewer Life Guards: The Aegis of Hesperus
New Kyoto Roshigumi: The Blades of Honor
Defenders of Donegal: Loyal Opposition
1st Arcturan Guards: A New Tradition ​

Higher Loyalties: House-Aligned Mercenaries ​

The Warrior Monks of St. Cameron: Warriors of Humanity
The Kell Hounds: The Wild Pack
Knights Resilient of St. Marinus: Oaths of Steel
Ransom's Raiders: A Family Business
Brotherhood of Cincinnatus: Keepers of the Lyran Spirit ​

Principality and March Militias
Royal Federation Marine Corps ​

Marine Corps Combat Command ​

Royal Navy ​

1st Battle Fleet
2nd Battle Fleet
3rd Battle Fleet
4th Battle Fleet
1st Independent Squadron
2nd Independent Squadron
1st Light Squadron
2nd Light Squadron
3rd Light Squadron
4th Light Squadron
Independent Commands ​

Royal Aerospace Force ​

Arcadia Aerospace Division: The Phoenix Aegis
Atreus Aerospace Division: Immortal Eagles
Donegal Aerospace Division: Sky Foxes
Tharkad Aerospace Division: Flying Fists
Skye Aerospace Division: Albion's Shield
New Earth Aerospace Division: Paradise's Hope
March Aerospace Division Commands​

 

[Steve]

For Freedom and Federation​

Kawit Subdivision
Aguinaldo City, Libertad Continent
Freedom, Alexandria March
Royal Federation
19 August 3139



Smoke columns rose into a sky hued crimson by the flames of a distant inferno in the Libertad Forest Range. The hellish drumbeats of artillery rounds smashing buildings across Aguinaldo City echoed in the cockpit of First Lieutenant Luz Cristobal-Galtieri's Strider Hawk BattleMech. She stood at a hilltop amidst the few remaining houses of Kawit Subdivision not leveled by the Kuritan forces rampaging across the city. Below her was a scene of devastation, buildings broken into rubble with some still burning.

A voice crackled over the speaker in her neurohelmet. "Fire Lance, this is Bravo Command. What's the status on the evacuation?"

A glance at her holotank display showed her the sign of the city's passenger buses remaining stationary. The crowd of people being pressed in was smaller than it'd been even a minute ago, but it was clear they weren't fully loaded and wouldn't be for a few more minutes. To either side of the lines of buses, a lance of Hunter tanks were idling and ready to move out alongside a Ratha IFV and a squad of Grenadier battle armor troopers. The machines were colored in the traditional red, gold, and green of the First Launum Armored Cavalry RCT, the same as her lance's 'Mechs. "Not done, Bravo Command. They're still loading."

"Scouts report inbound Drac forces, at least a lance. Keep them occupied."

"Roger that." Luz felt her stomach twist with worry and fury. Damn Dracs will butcher them just to make a point. She keyed her lance's channel. "Fire Lance, be ready, Dracs inbound. Keep them away from the civilians."

"Roger that, Lance Loo." Second Lieutenant O'Sullivan's Carabineer moved forward, flanked by the Fusiliers piloted by Sergeants Jamison and al-Bashir. Luz drew in a breath and waited for the first signs of a contact.

Buildings at the bottom of the hill started exploding. Not from explosive blasts, but from having full-size BattleMechs plow through them at full size. The low, lithe shapes that the warbook identified as Nekakami OmniMechs rushed through. The advanced medium machines opened fire the moment their weapons were clear. A flurry of particle bolts and missiles shot through the air. Jamison's Fusilier shuddered from multiple impacts, being the focus of their fury. His right arm was already up. The rotary autocannon installed in the limb blazed away, shredding the asphalt and rubble where the shells missed one of the crimson war machines. The blazing sword emblem on one 'Mech's leg disappeared in a blaze of sparks and savaged metal.

Luz settled her targeting crosshairs over the damaged Nekakami. With a squeeze of her right hand joystick trigger, her missiles rippled out of the twin torso launchers to either side of her cockpit. A laser AMS on one of the Combine missiles lashed out with repeated ruby streaks of light, shooting down several missiles in mid-flight. Explosions flowered from multiple impact points. A shower of metal shards briefly surrounded her target, joined by the tell-tale coiling smoke of burning coolant.

An alert tone rang in her helmet. Target lock! She maneuvered the Strider Hawk to throw off aim while missiles twisted through the air towards her. Twin cerulean bolts scoured armor from her 'Mech's left leg and chest.

In the same moment, a large missile plowed into O'Sullivan's Carabineer. An explosion engulfed the right side of the humanoid machine, tearing away the autocannon-carrying arm. A Thunderbolt missile! Her attention shifted to the icon of another 'Mech coming up to join the Nekakami. She felt her gut clench at the towering figure of a Great Dragon. The hundred ton assault OmniMech's Thunderbolt missile launcher still smoked from its opening shot. The large barrel on the 'Mech's right arm shuddered. O'Sullivan's machine toppled over from the impact of the gauss slug delivered by the machine's accurate shot.

Behind the Great Dragon, yet more Combine 'Mechs, an extra lance's worth, moved forward in the company of crimson-colored battle armor.

We can't win this. Luz forced her hands to remain at the controls, denying herself the comfort of clasping the crucifix that remained out of reach under her cooling suit. Her displays showed the buses were still loading. We have to buy them time. "Fire Lance, make yourself hard targets. We can't fall back."

"Understood, Fire-1."

She keyed the company tactical channel. "Bravo Command, this is Fire Lance. Enemy is here in overwhelming force. We'll hold as long as we can to get the civilians out."

After a moment, the familiar voice of Captain Montelbano came over the line. "Bravo Command confirms. Godspeed, Fire Lance. ¡Viva Launumeños!"

"¡Viva Launumeños!" she replied, before adding "For Freedom and Federation!" to bolster her morale. Her crosshairs settled on the Great Dragon, forcing her aim to remain steady despite the missiles blowing armor away from her wounded machine. As her fingers squeezed all of her weapons triggers, she sent her battered 'Mech into a run.

 

[Steve]

Introduction​

Martin,

Given the circumstances I felt it best to compile this information regardless of the outcome of the talks with the Arcadians. I feel this information is as comprehensive an account as I dared hope for in the time we had. I will admit we were greatly aided by the good deal of public source information available, especially thanks to ComStar's ConcertWatch organization. Their profiles on all of the Successor States on this side of the Looking Glass makes for reading that is both interesting and sobering, and the Royal Federation has been of particular interest due to the Arcadians' mixed reaction to the Peace of Dieron.

The Royal Federation's military capability reflects the different state of affairs in this Inner Sphere. The ending of major conflict earlier than our own history, due to the collapse of the Great Houses, preserved factories and machinery that enabled a more comprehensive recovery. The modern AFRF is nearly the size achieved by the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth at their height, and with less than half the worlds controlled by the union of Houses Steiner and Davion a century ago. That the Arcadians' military strength is not greater is due to the devastation of the Fourth Succession War that ended over twenty years ago.

While this gives me hope they will be able to decisively match the Clans devouring the Commonwealth, I have causes for worry. Not just that Maurer and the LCAF High Command might become paranoid over their strength, but that people will fail to appreciate their position in their Inner Sphere and overestimate the help they give. The AFRF is not the AFFC of 3050. It is not the strongest of the militaries of the Cisglass Inner Sphere, and the Peace of Dieron is not so absolute they can ignore their own borders to aid us. The LCAF will still be needed if we're to drive back the Clans.

I am sending this information ahead of my planned departure. With the HPG network still functioning in this Inner Sphere, it should get to you before I come through the Glass. I trust your decision on who this will be shared with. I look forward to seeing you again soon, and to continuing our work to save the Commonwealth.

Trillian Steiner-Davion
Arcadia (Cisglass), 15 February 3143

 

[Steve]

Phoenix Rising​

Born of many cultures with rich histories in the interstellar age of Humanity, the Armed Forces of the Royal Federation trace lineage back to multiple military traditions and services. Units with traditions stretching back to the Lyran Commonwealth and Free Worlds League fill the ranks of the service and their battle histories are still recognized and honored. Yet it is a comparatively young organization formed from the post-Collapse Successor State militaries that came to wage the conflicts of the Second Age of War.

The AFRF dates its foundation, officially, to 2956 and the formation of the Arcadian Free March and with it the Armed Forces of the Free March. Eighty-one years later they would be transformed into the Armed Forces of the Royal Federation by the Constitutional Reorganization Act that followed the Arcadian wave of expansion in the early Second Age of War. Afterward they would institutionally absorb the Royal Donegal Armed Forces and the Defiance Industries Security Corps in 3046 and 3116 while restoring historical Marik-aligned formations like the Marik Regulars and Atrean Dragoons.

The Collapse and the following Renaissance were formative experiences for the pieces that formed the modern AFRF. From this base the conflicts of the Second Age of War served as the crucible that fused the AFRF into the alloy that it is today, culminating in the bloody trials of the Fourth Succession War. During these eras, House Proctor has provided many of their best and brightest to the service. All but one of the monarchs served as combat officers. Three died on the field or from injuries sustained on the field. As such, the AFRF is tightly bound to House Proctor and the other ruling houses of the Federation that have followed their example.

Through the Second Age of War the AFRF underwent repeated tests of its combat capability on the offense and defense. In victory or defeat it has proven its distinction from any preceding service it might claim ancestry from, waging desperate defenses and aggressive offenses in the name of "Freedom and Federation".

The Peace of Dieron brought with it the bitterness of a victory partially-undone at the negotiation table. This was deepened by the failed effort to redeem that disappointment by a fresh appeal to arms, simply to be thwarted by the newly-risen Concert of the Sphere. The AFRF has spent the two decades since rebuilding its strength while facing an uncertainty unlike any they have faced in two hundred years.



Where Giants Meet

For the worlds that would form the core of what became the Royal Federation, local military history is dominated initially by the histories of the Lyran, League, and Hegemony militaries. The First Age of War saw its share of battles here despite the common mercantile interests of the states in question. Yet these worlds did not command their own destinies on the military or political field. Arcadia, Gienah, McAffe, Concord, all had their futures determined by the choices made on Tharkad and Atreus (and to a lesser extent, Terra) and aside from local militia formations or private military formations, had nothing in the way of local troops.

That is not to say they had no military history whatsoever. On Arcadia, the Lifeguards of House Duncan saw to the defense of the ducal line. Gienah's government, looking to self-defense, financed the founding of Gienah Aerospace Industries in 2505 and would locally produce both atmospheric and aerospace combat aircraft for the LCAF and local government use. The faithful Muslims on Dar-es-Salaam maintained a local defense army that delayed a significant Leaguer assault in 2513. They were not exceptions given the violence seen in the First Age of War.

Arcadia in particular would stand out for a time. After the League invasion and occupation of 2495-2499 devastated much of the industrial and mining economy, Arcadia was virtually forgotten by the Inner Sphere, to the extent many maps simply stopped showing it. The people of the world painstakingly rebuilt their industries during their long isolation which would only come to an end in 2596 when the Star League's surveys discovered the world was still populated. A plebiscite in 2602 and a court case decided in 2609 would confirm Arcadia's restoration to the Lyran Commonwealth, forestalling the prospect of an armed resistance to any grant of territory to the Free Worlds League.

The Star League brought an end to the violence of the Lyran-League border and heralded nearly two centuries of economic bounty. Whatever disputes Houses Steiner and Marik might have regarding territory, their proclivities for trade and entrepreneurship drove a vibrant cross-border trade that enriched many of the worlds along the main trade routes between Tharkad and Atreus. These worlds would go so far as to be majority "dissolutionists" in the mid-27th Century's initiative to simply dissolve the Lyran Commonwealth into the Star League. Nothing came of this movement in the end, but it served as a foreshadowing of the future to come.

No golden age lasts forever. The Star League eventually fractured through the 28th Century, culminating in the nightmare of the Amaris Coup and the resulting Empire of Amaris that the Usurper proclaimed from Terra. For a decade, the war to subdue Amaris drew volunteers from Arcadia, Gienah, and other worlds, all willing to don the SLDF's colors to thwart Amaris' goals.

But even in defeat, Amaris had fatally damaged the League. House Cameron was extinct by his hand, and his forces would claim General Kerensky and countless other lives with the use of atomic weapons in the fighting for Moscow during the Liberation of Terra. The Star League fractured with the House Lords disputing the succession. The SLDF disbanded save for the core that would follow DeChavalier in revitalizing the Terran state, with many of those returning home promptly conscripted or drawn into the burgeoning House militaries for the Succession Wars to come.

As regions go, in many ways the worlds around Arcadia were fortunate. Atomic weapon usage was uncommon. The devastation was primarily in civil infrastructure from conventional explosives. This is not to say these worlds got off easily, however.. Uhuru lost a quarter of its population and its prime industrial basin to Marik atomic strikes. The destruction of agricultural greenhouses vital to Launum's food supplies resulted in many millions of deaths from starvation and civil warfare into the 30th Century. Amity, Danais, Mariefred, Giausar, all saw cities destroyed by tactical or large-scale atomic weapons, and a biological agent on Hollabrunn would cost that planet a quarter of its population and over a hundred years of a high infant mortality rate until vaccines finally eliminated the plague responsible.

Whatever each individual world suffered, they would all collectively suffer the economic collapse that came with the end of the Star League's peace. Factories that survived fighting shut down anyway as customers a jump away could no longer buy their products. Food on breadbaskets like McAffe, Concord, and Arcadia rotted in storehouses instead of feeding Launum, Hyde, and other worlds with food shortages. The mass impressment of DropShips for the FWLM and LCAF to replace their war losses strangled the trading economy of the region. Misery spread to every world by the point the First Succession War ended, and with it, growing discontent with the central governments on Tharkad and Atreus. When the Second Succession War commenced after not even a decade of peace, support for those distant governments melted away. Through the 2830s to the 2860s, system after system broke away from the Free Worlds League and the Lyran Commonwealth even as those states' central institutions collapsed under the strains of renewed war. In 2860, Elizabeth Steiner declared the Lyran Commonwealth no more, and four years later, the Free World League Parliament voted to dissolve their state over "irreconcilable differences". The Great Houses that had dominated the destinies of the border worlds were no longer great, and a new period of struggle amidst chaos came to define the next century.


The Collapse

The end of interstellar state power in the reach of worlds between Bolan, Gallery, Campbelton, and Hesperus did not bring an end to the practice of war. Armies do not always dissolve cleanly and fade away. Line forces of the LCAF and FWLM were already often acting on their own initiative under charismatic or simply capable commanders. Orders to stand down or disperse were often ignored by soldiers who had no families or prospects outside of military life. These troops became armed bands that either seized worlds for themselves or became mercenaries who hired out to those worlds or nobles who retained the wealth to afford them. As mercenaries they often participated in battles for supremacy of a world's resources as the nobility and other local governments vied for power and influence over what remained of their broken economies.

In the state of wider interstellar collapse, this warfare often bore more resemblance to piracy than formalized line battles, and piracy itself became widespread. Many mercenary commanders and local nobles became pirate princes and lords, carving out bandit kingdoms on specific worlds in official or unofficial ways.

The band that would become the most prominent was a former contingent of LCAF officers and soldiers from the now-defunct Fiftieth Lyran Regulars. Under the command of former Hauptmann-Colonel Norman Johns, they adopted the name Lange's Lashers as a mercenary force and accepted employment from House Duncan, the ducal rulers of Arcadia. The Duncans underestimated the avarice of their new defenders, however. Johns decided to take power for himself and in 2866 his forces sacked and destroyed the Ducal Palace and the neighboring city of Roslyn. House Duncan was slaughtered to the last child and General Johns declared himself the ruler of much of the continent of Islay, establishing a feudal autocracy with him at the top. Other nobles and mercenary commanders followed his example. To deal with their crippling economic problems and the need for labor, laborers were conscripted from communities and assigned where the new leaders and rulers desired, or were imported from off-world. This forced labor system developed over twenty years to become direct ownership of the laborers instead of any notion of "emergency" civil service. This change was codified after Johns' murder by his own second-in-command, Carl Tabot, who adopted the styling of "Prince" and ended the pretense by formalizing the institution of human ownership. His forced laborers were slaves, and slaves he would call them, becoming the first and most notorious of the "Slaver Lords".

The people of Arcadia would come to call this period of their world's history "the Age of Chains", a terrible era of destroyed families and dehumanizing treatment as Carl and many other Arcadian nobles openly sold and bought human beings from each other and from offworld sources. Pirates and mercenary raiders started selling captives in the slave markets of Sannazaro, Roslyn, and other cities on Arcadia where the Slaver Lords held sway, and every year, thousands would die on the harsh inhospitable plateau of Leng on the Mull continent, their raw muscle replacing the destroyed automated drones that Star League-era miners had employed to extract the valuable ores. Worlds like Launum, still gripped in the chaos of civil conflict and starvation or ruin, saw their populations further reduced to feed the slave empire Tabot built.

His wealth from this abysmal trade, and his continued military power and success, brought more and more power for Tabot upon Arcadia. He forged pacts with off-world sources of machines and wealth, especially the ambitious Amir Hamid Rayhan of Dar-es-Salaam, the Brewers of Hesperus, and the more amoral merchants and traders from the Terran Union. Other rulers submitted to his authority or were crushed by the Lashers. In 2920, he formally adopted the title of "High Lord of Arcadia" and embarked on his final campaigns to subdue those regions of Arcadia where his system did not yet hold sway. After six years of brutal fighting with the subsequent mass enslavement and other atrocities against the populations resisting him, he came to the precipice of success.


The Liberator

Many worlds in this region had historical figures of the Collapse era whose legacy echoes on to the modern day. Duke James Franklin would be remembered for sparing his world of Concord a civil war by agreeing to the Concord Government Reform Laws of 2904, virtually dissolving the nobility of the planet in favor of North American republicanism. Amir Abdullah Rayhan of Dar-es-Salaam oversaw the preservation of order during the early Collapse era, paving the way for Dar-es-Salaam's eventual bid for regional power and continuing prominence. Duchess Miriam Shaltiel and her son Duke Mordecai stabilized Gienah's broken industrial economy and left it in a position to compete for regional power. Count Flavian de Fortemps of Bondurant employed mercenary support and a planetary militia to impose an end to a half century of bloody civil war.

What these figures, and many like them, have in common is their direct or indirect links to the nobility of the region. Even in the destitution wrought by the fall of the Star League and the horrors of the Succession Wars, surviving nobility often retained their grip on wealth and power in some form, and used marriage alliances with each other or the mercenary and pirate warlords to maintain their status.

It is an irony that all of these leaders would be outshone by the most significant figure of Arcadian history. Sara Proctor, to be known to posterity as "the Liberator", was born in 2890, a commoner in a commoner family with no ties to the nobility. Yet from her humble beginnings in the rural New Salem township of northeastern Islay's Plymouth Peninsula, Sara became one of the most influential and known figures of the 30th Century with a reputation and legend that spanned the entire Inner Sphere. She would be remembered as the woman who challenged Carl Tabot in his moment of triumph and ended his dreams of conquest and dominion, founding what became a new ruling House and leaving a legacy that continues to shape the peoples of Arcadia and her neighboring systems through to the modern day.

At the age of fourteen, Sara was dragged from her hometown by the "labor conscription" patrols taking slaves for the distribution to the lords in the city of Sannazaro. She was assigned to Tabot himself, serving as a stable girl for his racing horses for two years, until an act of teenage rebellion led to her escape as a stowaway upon an independent trader's DropShip, the Melanie. For the next twenty years, Sara served as a member of the Melanie's crew while traveling the Inner Sphere. She would become one of the ship's officers and trained to pilot the broken down 'Mechs the crew employed for self-defense. Following the death of the Melanie's long-time captain in 2923, Sara became the captain of the ship and responsible for its ventures.

Instead of hunting more lost technology or relics, Sara turned her crew into the core of a larger force. For several years in the 2920s she toured the Terran Union, gathering support from philanthropists and signing on TUDF veterans, exiles from the other Successor States, and willing mercenaries for her Liberation Army, with which she would free her homeworld.

In 2926 the Liberation Army jumped into Arcadia's system, commencing the Liberation War. For the next two years they led the remaining resistance to Tabot through a brutal war of maneuver and counter-maneuver marked with grisly atrocities against Liberationist towns and cities and brutal reprisal executions of Tabot's supporting nobles and forces. Through 2927 the balance tipped against Tabot, particularly the loss of all of Mull and the valuable mines of the Leng Plateau. Late in that year he goaded Sara's forces into a battle at Worcester in the Plymouth Peninsula and left her 'Mech a gutted ruin after ambushing her command company. Yet this victory was short-lived and in the following March, the two met again at the town of Parnon two hundred kilometers from Tabot's capital at Sannazaro. This time, Sara prevailed, and the High Lord of Arcadia died at the hands of his own escaped slave.

With Tabot's death and his family fleeing into exile, Arcadia was left with the task of rebuilding. The planet's noble councils returned to session, purged of those families that had embraced Tabot's use of slavery, and ultimately chose as the new ruler Sara herself. She was ennobled as Baroness of New Salem and subsequently recognized as Duchess of Arcadia, married one of the Arcadian nobles who supported her in the war, and founded House Proctor as the new ruling house to replace the extinct Duncans. The Age of Chains was over. Arcadia was free.

 

[Steve]

The Arcadian Free March

A World Reborn


Sara Proctor's reign began with constitutional reformation of Arcadia's planetary government. The nobility retained some of their power and privileges but ceded much of their political authority to new representative assemblies. Arcadia's national flag and seal changed to reflect their trials and sentiments following the Age of Chains, with a phoenix prominent upon a forested mountain.

The people of Arcadia needed that optimism. The early years after the Liberation were certain to be rough. Cities needed to be rebuilt and refugees tended to. A host of freed slaves displaced from destroyed homes or from other systems pushed the resources Duchess Sara and her government had to their very limit. Economically the planet's cost of rebuilding was compounded by the need to maintain defense against the threat of Carl's son Matthew returning from his exile. Arcadia's financial system was in shambles, gutted by the neglect and mismanagement in those regions Tabot and his cronies had controlled.

Arcadia had advantages, however. While slave labor was abolished, hired labor proved capable of maintaining the resource operations necessary for Arcadia's surviving industry to power reconstruction. The immense breadbaskets of the planet's main continents and the plentiful fisheries of the Arcadian Ocean ensured a steady food supply and gave Arcadian authorities vital means to gain revenue through food exports to neighboring systems. The Star League-era shipyards over Arcadia's moon, Artemis, were slowly repaired and reactivated with hired Terran engineers. This provided a windfall from ship construction contracts for the rebuilding interstellar economy outside the Terran Union.

As the 2930s and 2940s passed, a baby boom expanded the planetary population greatly, coupled with mass immigration from other worlds beset by civil conflict and frequent pirate attack. While the Liberation Army had disbanded and the mercenaries all moved on, a core of veterans remained to form a solid defensive force that many marauders decided was too dangerous to fight. This made the planet a preferred destination for refugees and immigrants that brought needed skilled labor and technical personnel to the economy. These boons provided an influx of additional revenue from taxes and customs duties that allowed Arcadia to repay most of the debts of the Liberation War within thirty years, restoring House Proctor's credit and fueling greater economic investment. Starting in the 2950s Arcadia made the final leap into domestic BattleMech design and development, moving beyond the licensed machines made in their surviving factories to whole new designs.

By 2955, Arcadia had surpassed Gienah in economic influence and population. But instead of becoming rivals, three decades of cooperation between Sara Proctor and Mordecai Shaltiel produced the foundations for a new Successor State. This was realized in 2956 when they signed an agreement with Duchess Isabel Laguna of Launum and Duke Frederick Katzenberg of Hyde to form the Arcadian Free March, with Sara as March-Princess and House Proctor recognized as the rulers. This combination ensured a state that by neighboring standards was economically stable and influential. Through the next thirty years, ten more worlds would sign up from both sides of the former border. To protect this state, the defense forces of the member worlds were combined into a new institution, the Armed Forces of the Free March.

For the first twenty years of their existence the AFFM's primary foe were the raiders endemic to the Inner Sphere of the 30th Century, striking from the multitude of worlds where pirates had suborned, overwhelmed, or been adopted by local officials. By 2980, however, a new foe was becoming evident, with the rise of Amir Rashid Rayhan on Dar-es-Salaam. Rashid's held ambitions to form a Rayhannid Sultanate in the former Lyran spaces, turning his family's informal empire into direct rule. The Free March was a growing threat to those ambitions. Through the 2980s, Rayhannid forces launched repeated raids and strikes upon their neighbors, but these efforts failed in their task of breaking down the AFFM or causing civil strife.

At first, these attacks were still spread out enough to be considered little different thaan the other raiding attacks suffered in the period. In her final years, Sara Proctor was hesitant to commit to a war, and continued efforts at diplomacy. Amir Rashid saw this as a sign of weakness and that his strategy was working, a sentiment he felt even after the old Liberator finally breathed her last in 2986. For several years, her son March-Prince William Proctor maintained official peace in the face of the raids. Emboldened by this apparent passivity, Rashid formalized his empire, sending troops to compel the submission of several nearby systems to be his feudal vassals in truth and not simply by influence.

William was not his mother, however. Already half a century old, he saw this challenge for what it was and considered the Rayhannids an existential threat. To deal with their continuing raids and allow for counters, he formed the Strikers, a number of battalions of 'Mechs with air support meant for raiding attacks or counter-raiding operations. By 2991, with the first four formations ready, William led the AFFM to the planet Senftenberg to support the anti-Rayhannid forces contesting Rashid, starting a near-decade long conflict called the Rayhannid War.


The Decisive Struggle


For the last decade of the 30th Century, a semi-organized interstellar war raged once more over what had once been the League-Lyran border region. Houses Proctor and Rayhan were now locked in a struggle that would decide which would rule this stretch of the Inner Sphere.

The Arcadians had advantages in raw resources and size, but there were points of vulnerability that the Rayhannid forces would seek to exploit. Amir Rashid was more than willing to invoke religion and to try and sway Muslims on Free March worlds, and others, to his cause, which in turned stoked sectarian violence on Mariefred, Eilenburg, Zwenkau, and Senftenberg, even causing flare-ups on Uhuru and Megrez behind the lines of fighting. Raiding formations from the Dar-es-Salaam Cavalry exploited the employment of troops on the front to raid worlds across the Free March. Even with Gienah's aerospace factories working 24/7 the AFFM lacked the fighter numbers necessary to protect every world completely. The Rayhannid forces struck with speed and ferocity, often destroying or seizing industrial materials and war material despite militia resistance. Civilian factories were likewise targeted and on some occasions communities were damaged by fighting. The conflict became a significant drain on the economy and demanded the raising of ever-greater numbers of militia soldiers and wider defenses against these raids. House Brewer of Hesperus and House Umayr of Bolan exploited the conflict for their own respective gains, selling weapons to both sides at marked up prices, and as always Terran arms dealers were happy to do the same.

As painful as these constant raiding strikes were, however, the Free March proved it had the reserve to power through them. The Strikers alternated between their own raids, including daring attacks on the Rayhannid factories that Amir Rashid's forces could not prevent, and hunting down and eliminating the Rayhannid cavalry formations striking Free March supply and industry. Rashid's efforts to consolidate power turned nobles on suborned worlds against him and denied him the trade and tax benefits that would have permitted his state to endure the rising costs of conflict better than their adversaries. His blatant cynical abuse of religion did not sway enough Muslims on other worlds to his aid, the calls to jihad being dismissed and even angrily repudiated by clerics furious at what they perceived as Rashid placing ambition over the needs of the Islamic faith and its adherents. Over the course of the decade, the informal empire of the Rayhannids fell apart, with Senftenberg, Eilenburg, and Mariefred being liberated by the AFFM and voting to join the Free March themselves.

The war came to its head with a full-scale invasion of Dar-es-Salaam in 2999, led by March-Prince William. Years of campaigning and fighting had taken their toll, but in a final ten month campaign William's forces compelled the submission of Rashid's troops. Rashid died leading a suicidal battle for his capital of Khadijah and his uncle Faisal assumed his throne. Just before the end of the century and millennium, he negotiated House Rayhan's surrender and admission to the Arcadian Free March. The remaining worlds that had been bound to Rayhannid control were offered admission but none agreed, returning to their independence.


Consolidation and Peace


William returned home in victory. To stabilize his House's expanded holdings and economy, he stood down a number of formations raised for the war. The AFFM was reorganized into a defensive army, with two-thirds of its 'Mech forces assigned to militia duty while a small force of eight regiments remained a core of offensive fighting strength. The Strikers were disbanded.

William would not long enjoy the fruits of victory. Years of war and ill health quickly led to medical ailments. He recalled his elder daughter, Sara-Marie, from her military education, and began the process of her education in statecraft as well as seeing to her marriage. He would live to see his first legitimate grandson, Thomas, born in 3006 before passing away in 3008.

Sara-Marie was not the military ruler her father was. She left much of that policy to her advisors. They continued William's defensive military policies, keeping the AFFM lean. Budgets were instead focused on the modernization sweeping the Inner Sphere in the early 31st Century. Research firms and associated industrial complexes rediscovered Star League-era techniques, aided officially or unofficially by Terran-trained engineers. A handful of weapons first tested in the later years of the Rayhannid War became widespread. Terran companies sold field upgrade kits that could be adapted to Arcadian native designs, integrating more Star League-era weaponry and technology into the AFFM's lead formations, and the Navy was expanded with the final repairs and reactivation of two recovered Star League-era Lyran frigates. The shipyards at McAffe and Arcadia, as well as the aerospace plants of Gienah, provided new DropShips and aerospace fighter craft to supplement this buildup.

Pirates continued to be an occasional annoyance, with strikes on Free March worlds coming every few years. The Free March Militia was typically capable of handling them, but on Mariefred and Megrez larger forces proved necessary. The greatest test of the AFFM came in 3019 when Hollabrunn's defense forces were virtually destroyed by the rampaging Cutter Brigade, an ex-mercenary force of brigands who violently pillaged across the old Rim Worlds and outer Lyran systems for a generation. The AFFM dispatched a concentration of units that brought the Brigade to ground and utterly destroyed them, bringing that world into the Free March in the process. It would be the first widespread use of many recovered technologies and the new battle armor suits for the infantry. Over the following decade, conventional infantry forces were relegated to the militia in favor of battalions of armored infantry suits, dubbed a better investment in costs and manpower.

Like many Successor States, the Free March had advanced enough that the 3022 Arms Export Control Act by the Terrans did little to prevent the final steps to fielding a full range of Star League-era technology. Newer models of tried BattleMech designs, as well as new designs, enhanced the combat power of the AFFM and other Successor State armies. By the end of the 3020s, the AFFM's offensive core was a modern fighting force of ten BattleMech regiments with supporting contingents. This proved to be a boon as a new age of organized warfare engulfed the Inner Sphere.

 

[Steve]

War and Reformation

The Second Age of War


In 3030 the Inner Sphere exploded into a cacophony of organized violence not seen in nearly two centuries. One by one the majority of the Successor States sent their best regiments into action, plucking up independent worlds across their frontiers as conquests. The Second Age of War had begun.

The AFFM was one of the few militaries not involved in this sudden onrush. The Free March had, with the exception of Dar-es-Salaam, admitted its worlds in a general voluntary fashion. Compulsion, while not unthinkable, was disdained and a bone of contention between expansionists and anti-expansionists. As months passed and world after world fell to other powers, the Free March remained quiet like few others. Even Andurien's diplomatic efforts at peaceful expansion were not replicated.

After three years, it was clear this new spasm of aggressive warfare was not ending. The First Skye War and First Andurien Wars, and the fall of the Lancaster Authority in the old Draconis March region, showed how quickly a Successor State could be overrun. It made clear the fate that the Free March faced if it remained quiet and did nothing to expand its frontiers and its resource base. The expansionists were proven right.

In 3033 the AFFM switched to the offensive. The delay was made up for in the frantic, breakneck pace the AFFM adopted, the result leading to the Free March more than doubling in size in the span of a single year. Arrangements with the Marik Commonwealth and the Defiance-Hesperus Consolidant, and the conquest of Bolan by the Marian Hegemony, threw up hard barriers to further consolidation. It did not bring an end to AFFM operations, though. The Free March started the second year of offensive operations with the famous "Rettungsaktion" inflicting losses on the Marian legions on Bolan and extricating House Umayr from the Hegemony's slave pens. At year's end, House Proctor became a charter member of the new Lyran Alliance and joined the Second Skye War with a descent into the Marik Commonwealth and the collapsing Kashamarkan state. Once more worlds fell, by force or diplomacy, and the Free March's borders expanded. The Mariks, attacked on two fronts by the Lyran states and the Orientan and Harsefeldan armies on the other, collapsed in 3035. Atreus City itself fell to Arcadian troops by Christmas and the whole of Atreus would be Free March soil by March of 3036.

By the end of the Second Skye War, the Free March was more than triple its size at the start of the expansion. The addition of over fifty new worlds mandated military and political reorganization. The Federal Militia was altered to accommodate the defense needs of House Proctor's new state and offensive units organized and marshals. Politically the Free March was reorganized into a federation of marches, assuming the title of the Royal Arcadian Federation, and March-Princess Sara-Marie was crowned once more, now the High Queen of the Federation.

The new Federation plunged into conflict immediately. The raging Second Andurien War provided risk and opportunity, and under advisement from her council, Sara-Marie agreed to an intervention. Whereas most expected this to be against House O'Reilly's legions, that state's reorganization into the Principate and the abolition of slavery by Princeps Corvus O'Reilly had changed some matters. A deal for the restoration of Bolan to House Umayr and their admission to the Federation was struck, worlds were exchanged, and when the re-designated Armed Forces of the Royal Federation marched again, it was as alllies of House O'Reilly. The Lyran states' Operation INGRATITUDE targeted Harsefeld and Oriente instead, shifting the strategic balance of that war and ensuring its termination by a ceasefire and temporary peace nine months later.


The Struggle for Donegal


The three year peace would hold, but only just, and it would not be peaceful for the Federation. Sara-Marie's son Prince Thomas, still a bachelor, chose to seek marriage to Lady Johanna Steiner, the sister of Archduke Ethan Steiner. This marriage provoked a crisis on Donegal over the dying Queen Raquel's succession, with the Coventry branch of the Steiners contesting Raquel's final testament naming Johanna her heir. The result was the breakdown of the Lyran Alliance in the War of Donegalian Succession. Johanna's supporting Loyalists fought the Legitimists fighting for the claim of Arthur Luvon and his children by New Commonwealth Archon Katrina Steiner. The AFRF supported the Loyalists against Katrina's NCAF and the Legitimists, starting a conflict that raged from Donegal to Bolan. In 3041, with the termination of the three year peace, the Oriento-Capellan Empire and its allies in the St. Ives Compact immediately plunged into the Arcadian Federation's Marik worlds and the Consolidant. By the end of the year the Compact had conquered or nearly conquered several major worlds and advanced as far as Gladius and McAffe. The newly-formed Federation seemed on the cusp of defeat.

Salvation came from multiple quarters. Exploiting the overstretch of the mighty Imperial fleet, the Principate's legions counter-attacked at McAffe, and their Rim Commonality allies relieved Atreus and Campbelton. Ghastillian intervention and the assassination of Archon Katrina and her family broke the back of the Legitimist cause. The Commonwealth collapsed and fell to its foes, allowing AFRF forces to rally and start throwing the invaders back. The Lyran counterattack reclaimed most of the lost worlds before agreeing to a renewed peace pushed by First Prince Ian Davion. With their logistics systems reeling from the complete severance of Terran arms exports by the Terran Union in 3040, the belligerents were compelled to agree to a status quo peace for at least ten years.

The need to accommodate the loss of Terran arms supplies coincided with the need to reform the AFRF once more, this time to accommodate the surviving forces of Loyalist Donegal. Sara-Marie's abdication at the end of 3043 brought Thomas to the Arcadian throne. He would take the title of High King and his wife that of High Queen, co-rulers of the Royal Federation of Arcadia and Donegal.


Surviving the Onslaught


The AFRF had only just regained its footing when the Terrans' Operation: REVIVAL started in August 3050. The Terran Crusade was as harsh and brutal a trial for the AFRF as it was for all the other Successor States. Arcadia and Donegal were besieged and Atreus, Buckminster, and numerous worlds would likewise fall or come under attack. Donegal would not only hold but force the Terrans to withdraw. On Arcadia, the fall of Roslyn and destruction of the Royal Palace, with the occupation of several major population centers, prompted fierce domestic insurgencies while surviving field forces kept the Terran invaders tied down on each continent. Shortly after New Year's 3051 Thomas and Johanna arrived in-system with the assembled might of the AFRF that drove the Terrans from the system at major cost to the naval forces.

Over the next few years, the Terran invasions were slowly but steadily beat back by the bloodied regiments of the AFRF. In 3054 Atreus was liberated and the Terrans forced out of the heart of the old Free Worlds League. The Robinson Accords brought the armies of the Successor States together in common cause, a full maximal effort on the Terrans that retook planet after planet. War factories were rebuilt or outright constructed from scratch to provide the weapons to counter the Terrans' technological edge. The AFRF, supported by the Principate, Ghastillian, and Consolidant forces, pushed into the Isle of Skye through 3056 and pierced the first layer of Terran Union worlds in 3057. In early 3059 New Earth would fall after vicious fighting.

At the end of 3059, Thomas Proctor and Johanna Steiner joined many of their fellow rulers and senior commanders for the single greatest military operation since the First Succession War. Operation SERPENT saw the descent of over a hundred BattleMech regiments upon the Terran system and the commitment of the majority of the Inner Sphere's surviving naval power. After months of fighting Thomas led his Arcadian Guards into Geneva where he nearly died at the hands of Director-General Natasha Kerensky. Kerensky, in turn, fell to General Penelope Reynolds of the Lexington Combat Group. Within the week, the Terran Union surrendered. The war was over.


Stalemate


Hopes for a lasting peace in the spirit of the common effort remained vibrant, but they proved tragically short-lived. In 3062 General Reynolds died from complications of her long and arduous military career. The following year, the ongoing dispute over Sirius and Procyon between the Defiance-Hesperus Consolidant and the Oriento-Capellan Empire led to an outbreak of violence that spread quickly to the rest of the border. The Federation, acting on behalf of its ally, invaded the Empire and was invaded in turn. Once more, First Prince Ian Davion convinced the two sides to stop fighting. It was not an easy choice and both sides were increasingly embittered, with Empress Eris Halas of Oriente's hatred for House Proctor restored by the deaths of her son, Alexander Halas-Liao, and her closest friend and advisor, Ser Arthur Klaes, in the fighting on New Olympia.

During the fighting, Thomas and Johanna's son and heir Prince Ethan became fast comrades with the heiress of the Consolidant, Mathilde Brewer-Steiner. This contact expanded into an agreement to marry that would, in the coming generation, see the Federation integrate the Consolidant as well. Already the two realms were tightly bound by economics and need for mutual self-defense. The official union would formalize that connection and make the Federation one of the strongest industrial powers in the Inner Sphere.

Barely a year after this agreement, war once more broke out. This time, however, it was the Compact powers that faced invasion by Galedon and the Kilbourne Concord. The mightiest bloc in the Inner Sphere, within a year's campaigning the two powers brought the Azami to the brink and drove into the heart of the Federated Suns and TIkonov. With so many Imperial troops tied down watching their hostile borders with the Lyran and Spinward states, the Compact seemed destined to fall.

Judging said outcome would leave Galedon and the Concord the undisputed hegemony of the Inner Sphere, Thomas and Johanna decided to act. The Lyran states intervened in the war, siding with their enemies against the greater threat to their future independence. Thomas and Johanna led troops through Azami territory and to Tikonov while their son and daughter-in-law joined the expeditionary force sent to the relief of New Avalon. This shift in the strategic balance halted the mighty Galedonian and Concord war machines before slowly pressing them back.

The costs were high. Thomas and Johanna would both die on Tikonov. Ethan inherited the Federation but did not return home until after the war ended in 3074 with the Peace of Nox. The balance of power was preserved, and as a reward, the Empire was persuaded to return Stewart to the Federation in exchange for the Federated Suns granting them control of Sarna.

High King Ethan was as capable a military commander as his parents. The haphazard rebuilding of the AFRF following the Fall of Terra was ended with a fresh set of reforms. New standardized unit formations were enacted. Regimental Combat Teams were supplemented with the Combat Division, a heavier formation of up to a dozen regiments of machines and men centered around a 'Mech regiment. The "square regiment" reform was spread to the entirety of the AFRF. OmniPod technology was likewise expanded in employment. The ranking system was overhauled and a new grade of flag officer added with the introduction of new command structures for interstelllar operations.

The Peace of Nox soon gave way to continued invasions and counter-invasions from Buckminster to Atreus. Of the Compact powers, only the Federated Suns and, to a much lesser extent, the Union of Tikonov would retain friendly relations with the Federation. A civil dispute on Odessa prompted a military invasion by the Communal League that led to what was known as the Vanguard War, forcing the AFRF to fight on another front and preventing Ethan from consolidating for major strategic efforts. A Communal invasion of Donegal pre-empted and disrupted his plan to compel peace with the revolutionary states of COMINTERSTEL. As the century drew towards its close, the Federation was wreathed in the flames of war.

But it was a treacherous ally that would bring them to the brink of ruin.


Bloody Treachery and Repaid Debts


Since the rise of Corvus O'Reilly and the Corvid Principate, relations with House O'Reilly had been warm and open. The end of slavery by the powerful Periphery-based state and the settlement of territorial disputes cleared the obstacles against Houses O'Reilly and Proctor becoming allies against the threat of the Oriento-Capellan Empire. This alliance was solidified symbolically by the 3040 marriage of Corvus' cousin and adopted daughter Livia O'Reilly and one of Sara-Marie's sons, Prince Mark Proctor.

But faultlines remained. The territorial ambitions of the O'Reilly vassal, the eccentric "KING of Pilpala" that ruled in Bolan's lost worlds, remained intact, and Houses Umayr of Bolan and Shah of Tamarind likewise wished to regain lost worlds held by the Principate. The patrician class of Alphard and the old Marian Hegemony had likewise never forgiven Corvus for taking their slaves and cracking down on their powers following the coup attempt of 3040. A second coup, against Corvus' other niece and successor Lucia O'Reilly-Logan, failed in 3069.

In 3095, a third coup was launched in response to a fresh set of proposed reforms by the new Princeps, Julius O'Reilly, the eldest son of Livia. Led by Julius' ambitious nephew Scipio, the coup plotters suborned the Praetorian Guard and killed Julius and his brother Marius. Livia and her husband were placed under house arrest while Julius' son, Flavius, escaped to Canopian exile with his family and a core of loyal legions. Scipio declared the Principate dissolved and reformed the Alphardian state as the Scipian Dominate.

Many expected Scipio to focus upon the Oriento-Capellan front, particularly given their responsibility for his parents' death, or to fight to overwhelm Canopus when they refused to hand over his cousin Flavius. Scipio, however, had another prize in mind. In 3097, he threw the bulk of his legions over the border into the Royal Federation, openly declaring his intention to seize the Arcadian throne by right of his Proctor ancestry. Almost simultaneously, the Compact powers commenced another series of invasions across the border, targeting worlds from Atreus to Vega.

High King Ethan pursued a bold strategy. Instead of rushing to expend most of his forces against the Dominate, he maintained his defenses against the Empire and the Azami. This resulted in the fall of both Tamarind and Bolan and Scipian legions sweeping into the heart of the Arcadian realm, but it also inflicted significant losses on the Compact powers and forced them to withdraw, though Vega was lost once more due to a lack of reinforcements. With this attack beaten back, he prepared to meet the legions in a decisive battle that was to come on Arcadia itself, all while raiding and skirmishing with them on challenged worlds like Colfax, Dixie, and Senftenberg.

As things stood the outcome would, win or lose, have certainly forced the Federation to sue for peace with the Compact states on their enemy's terms. But no sooner had Scipio's legions landed on Arcadia and started seizing cities that both sides detected the arrival of another fleet, this from the Federated Suns. They were under the personal command of First Prince Victoria Davion and carried with them the entire Davion Royal Brigade of Guards. "House Davion remembers", she broadcast to the system, while her WarShips engaged the Dominate's fleet at Duncan Station. Ethan, with the support of Victoria, had lured the hotblooded young imperator into a trap, and the AFFS was ready to repay Arcadia for their relief of New Avalon twenty-eight years earlier.

The battle for Arcadia was short but fierce. Scipio's legions fought tenaciously but were outmatched by the defenders and their Davion reinforcements. After several battlefield defeats and the loss of his footholds on most of the planet, Scipio ordered the retreat. It would seal his fate, as two months later he was assassinated by his own legionary commanders for the failure. The invasion of the Federation broke down and the Lyran states conducted a counter-offensive that reclaimed their lost worlds and a chunk of border systems. On Alphard, Flavius returned with his loyal troops and crushed the Dominate's leaderless supporters. He sued for peace on the current borders and High King Ethan, with one eye still cast towards the Empire, agreed. The Federation had fought its greatest campaign since the Terran War and emerged bloodied but victorious.

For the following ten years, the fighting of the later 31st Century halted. The strategic stalemate encouraged Ethan, and other rulers, to hold back and prepare for the future. The Royal Federation had other internal matters to focus on now that Princess Jacqueline, the heiress to the throne and to the Defiance-Hesperus Consolidant, was well into adulthood, and the day would soon come that she would finalize House Brewer's union with the Royal Federation. Whether it would be done during peace or war remained to be seen.


The Blood-Dimmed Tide


In February 3110, the Oriento-Capellan Empire dispatched an ultimatum to the People's State of Andurien, demanding their voluntary union with the Empire or the outbreak of war. The match had been lit and the Inner Sphere ignited in a conflagration as the Successor States lined up to strike the Empire or other neighbors, turning a regional battle into the long-dreaded Fourth Succession War. High King Ethan could not ignore the opportunity presented and immediately led his troops against the Empire. To preserve the Lyran Alliance, he was likewise compelled to support Ghastillia's long-sought invasion of the Communal League, sparking a renewed war with COMINTERSTEL as well. With the government's attention on these fronts, and Imperator Flavius likewise distracted supporting the Rim Commonality against the Empire, the vassals on the Federation-Principate border conducted their own war against the desires of their leaders. Once more, the Federation was fighting on multiple fronts.

Beyond the borders, the Galedonian-Concord alliance seized their chance and marched under the ambitious, megalomaniacal leadership of Director Kori Honda, who made war not just on the Compact but would strike all her neighbors in a bid to fulfill the ideology of her Black Dragon supporters. Indeed, at the height of her success, Kori would even break her grandmother's oldest treaty and fondest alliance to claim worlds in the name of a Kuritan revival.

It was not long before the costs of this new conflict struck to the heart of House Proctor. An Imperial counter-attack on the invasion came down on Ethan's troops at Nova Roma, leaving Ethan himself mortally wounded and several units battered. Princess Jacqueline was likewise nearly killed on Vega by Galedonian forces, forcing her evacuation to Arcadia while her mother, now the President of Defiance Industries and the Consolidant, struggled to govern both realms as her faculties steadily decayed from Alzheimers. The invasion of the Communal League bogged down in ferocious resistance and the Federation went into strategic paralysis. In 3112, the COMINTERSTEL forces launched a counter-offensive that broke the Arcadian siege of Sudeten and forced the AFRF to retreat.

Jacqueline was recovered enough by this point to begin directing policy. With Galedonian troops already approaching Rasalhague as well as Buckminster, she decided to sue for peace with COMINTERSTEL. A territorial arrangement was offered, including a border realignment that exchanged Buckminster for Arcturus, and in their desperate straits the COMINTERSTEL states accepted. Lyran and COMINTERSTEL troops were soon waging a war against the Galedonians from Rasalhague to Kessel. Galedon was forced back, world by bloody world. In 3115 Vega was reclaimed.

On the Imperial front, the Empire shifted sufficient forces to power a major invasion of the Principality of Atreus, one the Federation could not effectively counter due to troops tied down resisting the rogue strikes from the Principate. Through 3114 into 3115 Atreus became a battlefield and several worlds were invaded and lost. By the end of 3115, the Federation had enough troops and ships to force the Empire back and attack into Oriente once more, simply to be met by increasing resistance that slowed progress.

In 3116, the Consolidation Acts brought about the fusion of the Defiance-Hesperus Consolidant into the Federation. The DISC's surviving regiments were absorbed into the AFRF. Decades of fighting as allies made the process smoother than most and in many cases DISC troops simply changed their uniforms while DISC regional commanders changed the titles of their command headquarters. In peacetime there might have been more grumbling or tension, but the war was on the Consolidant's footsteps, with Kuritan and Imperial forces raiding as deep as Skye and Gladius to strike at the industrial heart of the Brewers' state. Integration was paramount for survival.


Against the Grindstone


By the second half of the decade the battles of the Fourth Succession War had every armed force bleeding to death. Entire units had been broken in battle. Many were at partial strength from sustained battlefield losses. More and more cadets were being shipped straight to the front and a number of worlds along the front began conscription to replace the losses to their defensive formations.

The offensives continued regardless. In 3116 the Royal Federation finally stabilized the front with the Principate with a signed agreement that compelled the local rulers to stop fighting, allowing both powers to focus on the Empire. This offensive started in 3116 with the capture of Regulus by Principate and Rim Commonality forces. The Empire quickly stalemated the Federation with a naval victory at New Olympia that broke the back of the Royal Federation's battle fleets on the front, forcing the AFRF to abort the invasion and fall back on the defensive. A second, even more smashing victory at Kearny opened the way for the Empire to invade the Rim Commonality through 3118, devastating that state, while the Knightly Orders of Oriente conducted another invasion of Atreus.

On the front with Galedon, the AFRF, working with the CLAF and FolksArme, won significant victories at Tukayyid and Buckminster, opening the way for further offensives by their allies and allowing the redeployment of troops towards New Earth. In 3118, even as Imperial forces were striking into the Principality of Atreus, these fresh troops invaded the Sirian Commonality and the Irian Province. Irian, which had been lost to the Empire in 3041, was reclaimed, along with all its adjacent systems and House Marik's lost homeworld bearing their name. In early 3119 a second wave struck at Sirius and Procyon directly. Sixty years after Arcadian and Hesperan blood had spilled to seize the worlds from the Terrans, yet more blood and months of hard fighting saw those long-disputed worlds reclaimed. The cost was higher than many expected, especially for House Proctor, as among the dead was Jacqueline's son James Proctor-Steiner, the Prince of Atreus.

Atreus itself was on the cusp of defeat as city after city fell to the Dowager Empress' loyal knights. The AFRF threw together a scratch force under the leadership of the rebuilt battleships Arcadia and Atreus and blasted their way through the reduced Imperial blockade, landing troops that saved Atreus City and made the Knightly Orders retreat. In October 3119, this latest attempt to claim the old Free Worlds League's capital ended in another failure with the Knights' retreat from the planet. At this point the Empire was itself overextended. Isolated by the Liaoist invasion of the Federated Suns, their ostensible ally, their forces driven from Andurien in 3117, and Tematagi likewise being reclaimed by the war-ravaged legions and the broken survivors of the Rim Commonality's forces, the Empire was now on the defensive as well.

But the AFRF was too battered to seize advantage. Where whole BattleMech regiments had once stood, mere battalions remained. Nineteen year old lieutenants commanded fellow cadets and drafted soldiers under the oversight of majors and lieutenant colonels not yet thirty. After a decade of the most intensive warfare the Inner Sphere had seen since the Terran War, the Federation, all the participants, were militarily exhausted. But they would fight on, if need be with more extreme measures, if a way to peace could not be found.

 

[Steve]

A Bittersweet Peace

The Congress of Dieron

As the tenth year of war came to a conclusion, the Successor States swayed in the wind. All were on the brink of military collapse, but all had reasons to fight on and the hope of victory. If they could only outlast their exhausted foes they might yet get everything. And the specter of defeat manifested fears of escalation and the use of atomic weapons, threatening a repeat of the Collapse.

The scope of prospective failure and fears of repeating the fall of the Great Houses was enough that the belligerents were receptive to the offer transmitted from Terra. Jason Hollings, the President of ComStar, proposed a general peace negotiation. While few were ready to immediately accept peace, no one was willing to be left out if one was found, so all agreed to meetings by their Terran delegations. Concern over Terra as a host led to Hollings locating the talks on neighboring Dieron in the ComStar facilities in the city of Tahlwynn. The delegations transferred talks there, and as the Successor Lords arrived one by one, the assembly came to be called the Congress of Dieron.

Jacqueline attended with the intent to secure the Federation's hard-won gains, particularly Sirius and Procyon. It was the bitter truth for her to have those two worlds singled out as the ones she would have to return, as Emperor Gregory Halas-Liao quickly secured peace terms with the Rim Commonality and Principate that included their acceptance of that term. He would accept the loss of Irian, Marik, and the rest of that province, but no more. Jacqueline fumed in fury and confronted Imperator Flavius and First Minister Semiha Cifti, but they were adamant: this was the best offer Jacqueline would get, and if she refused it they would make peace anyway and leave her to fight the Empire alone. The risk was too great, and her duty painfully clear. Jacqueline agreed to return the world her son James died to conquer for the peace the Federation desperately needed.

Other terms would be made, other bargains struck. The Azami would be placated, somewhat, by the recovery of Kessel, but only grudgingly accepted the Federation's capture of Sabik, with Vega beyond the reach of either as a conquest of Kori Honda. By the end of 3120 the other Successor States were in accordance. The Congress of Dieron voted on and agreed to the peace treaty, bringing an end to the Fourth Succession War.

The coming of peace brought relief to the battered armies. Celebrations broke out across the Federation's many worlds, even among the ruins of those worlds fought over. History had not repeated itself and there would be no recurrence of the Collapse. Jacqueline returned in triumph to Arcadia, where church bells rang and choruses sang hymns of praise and thanks. None realized the bitter fury festering in Jacqueline's heart, and the loathing she bore for the peace they thanked her for bringing them.


Operation MORNING STAR


For over two years the AFRF conducted the painful process of rebuilding their devastated ranks. Honored formations were deactivated so that personnel could be shunted into other formations in desperate need of reinforcement. The cadets sent to the front returned to their studies. BattleMechs, tanks, and other weapons of war were funneled into reserve warehouses for later use as the funding to maintain them in active service dried up. Rebuilding war-ravaged worlds had the priority, and Parliament was focused on restoration of the economy more than the AFRF.

The commanders of the AFRF responded with bitterness. Many of them felt they could have won it all, that another push would have broken the Empire for good. In the halls of the Royal Palace's subbasement levels and its military command facilities, they laid their plans and secured Jacqueline's blessing. The Peace of Dieron was due to face its first test.

The peace was broken by an explosion at a power substation on Irian in January 3123. Responsibility was quickly claimed by the Irian Peoples' Resistance Front, an anti-Lyran nationalist movement that boasted Liaoist ideology and ties to Maskirovka. The Empire immediately disavowed the attack but the pretext was there. The following month, citing the attack as aggression, the Royal Federation launched Operation MORNING STAR. Task forces jumped into Sirius and Procyon to seize the worlds quickly and before Imperial reinforcements could interfere.

The result was a fiasco. The IOCF had anticipated a potential threat since the end of the war and had reinforced the aerospace defenses without Federation intelligence detecting it. A heavy cruiser and several other WarShips were destroyed breaking through these enhanced defenses, and the planetary garrisons, likewise reinforced, quickly bottled up the AFRF invasion. The planned fait accompli became a shooting war.

Jacqueline made her public case. The worlds were rightfully the Federation's, as they had been granted to the Consolidant by the Treaty of Geneva and lost to Imperial treachery and force. The Empire had provoked the attack by supporting terrorism. But none wanted to hear these justifications. To the exhausted Successor States they were just self-serving claims to justify a land grab. Ambassador after ambassador arrived at the Royal Palace in Roslyn with notes from their rulers, demanding the Federation withdraw or face the combined strength of the Inner Sphere as a violator of the Peace of Dieron.

The Command Staff counseled defiance. The threats were bluffs by states still repairing from war losses. But even as they encouraged Jacqueline to fight on, her Privy Council split under a ministerial revolt led by her foreign minister Lady Jessup. Parliament voted a blistering censure of Jacquelline for abusing her security powers to resume conflict and halted further funding of the AFRF until offensive combat operations ceased. If Jacqueline fought on, she would have to compel her legislature to fund the war as well as defy the demands of the whole Inner Sphere.

The grieving High Queen capitulated instead. She ordered a withdrawal. The Command Staff protested. She demanded their obedience or resignation.. Parliament demanded even more, and by the time the forces were withdrawing from the disputed worlds, the entire Command Staff was gone. Numerous other commanders resigned or retired in protest or disgust at this retreat or at the operation having been launched at all, including several members of Jacqueline's close family. She withdrew from all but the most minimal, necessary duties of rulership, focusing on unarmed 'Mech duels and piloting in defiance of her physicians' advice and the raising of Prince Nathaniel Proctor, James' only son and the six year old heir to the throne.


Sparks Without Flame


With the Peace of Dieron preserved under what was now widely being called the Concert of the Sphere, the Royal Federation entered a period of what many felt to be a drifting malaise. The AFRF rebuilt slowly under the cautious gaze of Parliament. Budgets were kept trim. New WarShip construction was limited by hull size and no funds authorized to allow the restoration of deactivated units, only those that remained on the rolls. MORNING STAR had created an air of suspicion and distrust between the majority of Parliament and the AFRF, with the "Concert Bloc" of parties and federal-level politicians forming successive coalition governments that kept the purse strings tight.

It was 3134 before the AFRF performed any major operations. Even the Parliament proved sympathetic towards the anti-Kuritan uprising on Vega led by Musashi Honda, the nephew of Coordinator Kori and heir to Kori's slain older sister. Musashi sought to claim his mother Yumiko's throne on Galedon and restore the Co-Prosperity Sphere his great-grandmother Masako forged, but his forces were being ground down. Recognizing his potential in any future conflict with the reborn Draconis Combine, the AFRF acted. Operation SOVEREIGN SON saw the deployment of a task force to Vega that got the better of the Combine forces and extracted Musashi and his supporters.

The Combine did not counterattack immediately, but as the decade wore on, more and more DCMS raids struck the Arcturus and Alexandria Marches. The worst would come in 3139. The Second Sword of Light landed on the planet Freedom and proceeded to ravage every community and town they came across, demanding the surrender of Musashi. The First Launum Armored Cavalry struggled to protect the planet against the better unit, winning some tactical victories and saving refugees from the Kuritan aggression, but it took the arrival of reinforcements to force the Kuritans to withdraw. The Third Proctor Guards struck at New Wessex in 3140 to destroy the Second Sword of Light in retaliation, but the unexpected presence of the Ninth Galedon Regulars turned the operation into a fiasco and compelled the AFRF to not only withdraw, but agree to a prisoner exchange to recover captured personnel, returning captives from the attack on Freedom that had been due to face war crimes trials for their atrocities.

The border with the Azami has likewise been active. The Confederation has not reconciled the loss of Sabik, and their economic state from the war and rebuilding means the AFAC's units often look towards raiding to get needed supplies or for morale purposes. Repeated Azami raids have struck into the Skye March and Alexandria March, the greatest of these being the 3138 raid on Sabik. Only in recent years have these raids tapered off, but the Azami will not commit to ending them.

The frontier with the Principate has likewise presented challenges. On several occasions through the 3130s, unidentified troops raided into the Principality of Bolan, seizing supplies and materials or targeting local nobility and politicians known for anti-Principate views. Repeated diplomatic protests were answered with assurances that the PAF was not responsible, even though the attackers fought in legionary formations and tactics. The leading theory is that the new KING of Pilpala was using his personal troops to undermine Bolanese separatists in his holdings. Though the attacks ceased after the Bolan Heavy Guards inflicted a severe defeat on them in 3137, many among the Bolanese worlds fear a recurrence and have demanded expanded garrisons to meet the threat.

Yet the threat that looms greatest in the minds of many is that of the Federation's greatest foe, the Oriento-Capellan Empire. At first glance this seems peculiar, as the border with the Empire has remained the most peaceful of the Federation's frontiers since the failure of MORNING STAR. The isolation of the Empire makes aggression foolhardy. But it has also contributed to this fear. Upon his accession in 3137, Emperor Robert Halas-Liao committed the Empire to naval "restoration" in an effort at security. This massive expansion of the naval fleet of the Empire sent off alarms for many, but the lingering distrust of the AFRF and a zealous adherence to the Peace of Dieron kept the Concert Bloc in firm opposition to answering this buildup. This cost them in the 3140 elections where, for the first time since the war, the parties of the Concert Bloc endured numerous electoral defeats. The Defense Bloc, supporters of rearmament, won a greater share of seats in the houses of Parliament, and in conjunction with seats held by the Corporate and Labor Blocs, the AFRF commenced naval rearmament as well. Now many fear that the Peace of Dieron is starting to weaken.


Unexpected Changes


For years High Queen Jacqueline ignored the warnings against her unarmed 'Mech sparring and maneuvers. Her continued defiance of these warnings finally wrought their terrible consequences in May 3142 when her cockpit was crushed in a bout with a retired Solaris champion. The High Queen died before medical intervention could preserve her life. With her death, her twenty-six year old grandson Prince Nathaniel ascended the throne as High King of the Federation. He was summoned from his posting with the Bolan Heavy Guards to assume his new duties in the capital.

Nathaniel's arrival at the center of power sent a jolt through the Royal Federation's military and power structures. Twenty years of royal neglect transformed into a frenzy of activity from the Crown as the young man immediately went to work on directing policy in his preferred direction. Institutions used to the royal malaise suddenly had the High King's repeated missives for information and data. Dormant institutional channels of communication surged to life.

Nathaniel was in many ways an opposite to his grandmother. Jacqueline had been aggressive and even reckless; Nathaniel was thoughtful and deliberate. Jacquelline despised the Concert of the Sphere and the Peace of Dieron while Nathaniel championed them. Jacqueline was a soldier and warrior first, while Nathaniel had initially sought to focus on non-military education before being persuaded (some say compelled) to follow the family tradition and devote to his martial education first.

Nathaniel quickly took the lead on foreign policy and military plans. Lady Jessup was invited to be his foreign minister. He suspended the most aggressive naval expansion planning by the AFRF and commenced bilateral negotiations with Emperor Robert to begin a mutual drawdown of offensive units from their border systems. He took charge of AFRF command level assignments and started promoting and emplacing personnel who favored the Peace of Dieron. This placed him in immediate conflict with the Command Staff, particularly his distant cousin Lord Arnold Proctor-Steiner, a prominent supporter of major rearmament. Nathaniel even considered canceling the upcoming SIEGFRIED war games on Timkovichi over protests from the Communal League, but as the Canopian and Flavian contingents were already well underway to the site, he agreed to let them proceed.

This choice proved far more momentous than any could have imagined. The troops and ships of the Federation and Ghastillia would have their fateful jump, leading to the creation of the Atocongo-Timkovichi Anomaly, now better known as the Looking Glass. This phenomena forged a bridge to an alternate Inner Sphere, where the still-extant Lyran Commonwealth resists the invasions of the Clans, descendants of Aleksandr Kerensky's SLDF from a history where he survived the Liberation of Terra and led the SLDF beyond the frontiers of the Inner Sphere.

The fate of two histories, two very different Inner Spheres, is now linked, and the Royal Federation is on the frontline of that connection. With the threat of the Clans coming through the Glass, an alliance has now been forged with the Lyran Commonwealth,, and the AFRF committed to a war it never imagined having to fight. Time will tell how this conflict will go, and the consequences it will have.

 

[Steve]

The Hawk's Talons​

The Armed Forces of the Royal Federation have undergone significant changes since the start of the century. It began the century regaining lost territory from Scipio O'Reilly's legions, endured the Fourth Succession War, absorbed Defiance-Industries SecuriCorps' frontline regiments, and has quietly rebuilt and adapted to the more peaceful Inner Sphere of the past two decades.

The reorganization after the Peace of Dieron was meant to be followed by replenishing the ranks and restoring deactivated units. But the debacle of the failed attack on the Empire in 3123 prompted fierce Parliamentary opposition to that plan. The AFRF was not strangled of resources. However, it was kept from expanding beyond those units that remained intact after the post-war reorganization. The gulf between the AFRF leadership and Parliament that resulted remains a quiet factor in government circles, only coming out when sympathetic politicians vent against the majorities that refused rearmament until 3140 and who continue to restrain it. The change in leadership now exacerbates this issue with High King Nathaniel's opposition to expanding rearmament in favor of reinforcing the Peace of Dieron.

A further internal dispute, on whether the Combine or the Empire is the greater threat, quietly simmers at the mid and upper-level ranks. Additionally, separatism in Skye and Tamarind has undermined the reliability of some troops from those regions, and the cultural influence of the "Lyrantreu" is felt in a few units and causes problems as well. Now the service faces an unexpected complication caused by the formation of the Glass and the potential threats posed from the other side.

These issues aside, the AFRF remains an intact and well-functioning machine as an institution. The military education system continues to produce capable officers and personnel. The procurement system is relatively free of corruption, if not perfectly incorruptible, and the military industrial system held to high standards for the gear provided to the AFRF's fighting forces. The AFRF's units are well-armed and well-equipped with the proceeds of the Federation's powerful industrial system. The service's morale is robust, the personnel tend to be fairly-well or highly motivated, and when AFRF forces have fought since Dieron, they've always fought well. There is reason to be confident that this will continue to be the case on the other side of the Glass.


The Chain of Command

As with all state and military systems, the chain of command for the Royal Federation is bound up in the institutional mentality and ideologies of all involved. Command authority over the lives of many hundreds of millions of soldiers across three hundred worlds creates a crushing responsibility, and failing to see that authority maintained can result in the history of the fall of the Great Houses repeating.

The AFRF, from the lowliest new recruit to the most senior general officer, is held to adherence to this chain of command. Beyond the official regulation-recognized chain of command, however, other political authorities likewise must be recognized in their areas of responsibility, especially as they wield powers that likewise influence the AFRF's operations and guiding mission.



The Crown

The High King or High Queen of the Federation, sometimes referred to neutrally as "the Crown", is the ultimate authority for the AFRF as a whole. The monarch not only serves as the embodiment of the Federation as a state institution, they are by law and tradition the Commanding Officer of the Armed Forces, and with only a couple exceptions, all rulers of the Proctor line have been academy-trained and educated military officers. It is a hereditary position of House Proctor by the laws of gender-neutral primogeniture, though there are constitutional provisions for the Crown to pass further down the line of succession in the event of incapacity.

The power of the Crown has shifted over the years depending on the holder. High Queen Sara-Marie, before her abdication, was most active in civil affairs when allowed by circumstance, while her son High King Thomas and Thomas' wife, High Queen Johanna Steiner, often directly controlled the AFRF with the Command Staff treated more as aides and advisors. In more recent years High Queen Jacqueline allowed the Command Staff to direct the AFRF's day-to-day operations with little involvement and has only rarely weighed in on higher matters of policy and strategy. Her grandson, High King Nathaniel, has taken a more active interest in directing policy and strategy upon assuming the throne, however, which has understandably created friction within the upper echelons of the AFRF.



The Privy Council

The Privy Council is primarily a civil government body, consisting of the Cabinet — the appointed officers of state operating various ministries and bodies of the Federation's central government — and an assortment of lifetime appointees, mostly former ministers, but significantly for this document, all former Chiefs of Staff of the AFRF. These grandees are responsible for enacting the Crown's policies, be they civil affairs or budgetary matters or even diplomatic and military issues, with the Lord of the Privy Council being a Royal appointment responsible for advising the ruler while, in theory, furthering the ruler's chosen policies among the Council and transmitting their advice in reply.

Given the Privy Council often includes several former officers, both former Chiefs of Staff and those who served before going into civil service, the AFRF's voice is heard clearly in the body, though the Council has little role in the chain of command governing the AFRF on any basis.



Parliament

The Parliament of the Federation is a combination of influences from the old Free Worlds League and Lyran Commonwealth, as well as the pre-Federation Arcadian Free March. It is a bicameral body of two houses with different methods of appointment. The Assembly is democratically elected by the citizenry of various worlds. All worlds are guaranteed at least one representative in this house, with the most populated worlds having several. As of the reapportionment from the 3140 census, the Assembly now stands at one thousand three hundred and ninety-two seats, giving an average of four seats per world. The Senate, meanwhile, is of a smaller membership, with each world having two senators. One is elected by the populace, the other is a direct appointee of the planet's ruler or ruling authority.

The Parliament has no direct authority over the AFRF nor a role in the military's day to day decision making. What it does enjoy is the power of the purse: Parliament sets the Federation government's yearly budget from the tax apportionments, duties, and other sources of finance enjoyed by the central government. The Joint Committee on Defense, made up of both Assemblymembers and Senators, is the most prominent exercise of this connection, as they are responsible for reconciling the services' requested budgets with the money set aside for the year.



The Command Staff

Serving as military advisors to the Crown are the Command Staff, the highest-ranked officers of the AFRF. Led by the Chief of Staff of the AFRF, the Command Staff are made up of the heads of each Department of the AFRF. They determine many high level decisions about the operation of the military along with their advisory role to the ruler as well as Parliamentary leaders.




Departments of the AFRF


As with any organization, the AFRF has an established administrative system and attached bureaucracy filling various needs that keep the troops going. After all, someone has to buy the toilet paper and the rations, not to mention the ammunition and the fusion fuel.

The AFRF is divided into several Departments. Each is overseen by a five star officer with a four star officer typically serving as chief of staff. Since the Department heads collectively form the Command Staff of the AFRF and meet in that capacity, the chiefs of staff often handle some of the day-to-day matters with their own personal staff.


Army

The Army Department controls the ground forces of the AFRF, currently consisting of ninety-one line BattleMech regiments with attached units, eleven mercenary units either permanently aligned to House Proctor or under contract, and twenty-eight March Militia Divisions, each of which includes a BattleMech regiment for a total of one hundred-and-twenty-six BattleMech regiments. Militia Command oversees the operation of the Militia while the line units are under the Field Army Command. Special Forces Command oversees the operation and training of the Special Operations Teams, drawn from all service branches from volunteer personnel. It is overseen by the Marshal of the Army, currently Field Marshal Dame Bethany Townsend, and her Chief of Staff, General Lord Paul Steiner-Brewer.


Navy

The Navy Department controls the naval forces of the AFRF, both the WarShips and combat DropShips of Fleet Command and the various transport JumpShips and DropShips of Transport Command. Fleet Command is currently in command of four battleships, ten cruisers, twelve light cruisers, twenty frigates, twenty-four destroyers, forty corvettes, plus two dozen fleet carrier DropShips and over eighty picket combat DropShips, otherwise called Pocket WarShips, as well as an assortment of other smaller combat and auxiliary DropShips that are not under Aerospace command. Patrol Command oversees the several dozen combat and carrier DropShips of varying size used for anti-piracy system patrol and customs enforcement, as well as the JumpShips necessary to move them between star systems. A number of Transport ships have been placed under the command of specific Army regiments for purposes of swift deployment. The current Chief of Naval Operations is Grand Admiral His Grace John Pastig, the Duke of Bjornlunda. His Chief of Staff is Admiral Lord Marcus Proctor-Grimke.


Aerospace

The Aerospace Department is responsible for the ground-based Aerospace Forces and supporting the Navy's Aerospace Arm. Each March and Theater has an Aerospace Command overseeing planetary aerospace defenses while those aerospace groups attached to line forces fall under the overall command of the Aerospace Support Command. The Aerospace Department is responsible for establishing standards of training of all Aerospace personnel, with naval aerospace having special standards for naval-specific education. The Chief Air Marshal of the AFRF is Senior Air Marshal Dame Claudia Burbank. Her Chief of Staff is Air Marshal-General Lady Juliana Steiner.


Marine Forces

The AFRF's Marine Forces Department is the smallest of the combat branches. Consisting of the Marine Expeditionary Units, four in total and based on specialized assault DropShips attached to the Battle Fleets, it maintains eight regiments of primarily battle-armored marine forces trained in space operations, as well as responsibility for security of embassies and consulates. The current head of the Marine Forces Department is Field (or Marine) Marshal Sir Donald Fryar — who is commonly called "the Commandant" by members of his service and is the only five star officer in the organization — and his Chief of Staff is General Dame Trisha Masterson


Planning

The Planning Department, also known as the Planning Staff, produces the AFRF's operational plans in the event of conflict. They employ information given by the Royal Federation's intelligence services and reports from both public and private services to maintain a steady, up to date series of plans to account for various scenarios ranging from open war to dealing with organized pirate incursions. The officers in this Department all have some field service experience, although current-serving field personnel often feel otherwise. The current head of the Planning Department is Field Marshal Lord Arnold Proctor-Steiner, Count of Stronburg on Tharkad. His Chief of Staff is Air Marshal-General Dame Nadia Semyenov.


Military Intelligence

The Military Intelligence Department, often simply called the Intel Department, is responsible for providing intelligence information on possible or active threats to the AFRF's field commanders and general officers. They employ analysts, communications specialists, cryptographers, field agents, and interrogation specialists in both active intelligence and counterintelligence roles, as well as all relevant support staff. They maintain a sometimes tenuous relationship with the Security Information Service, who are tasked with providing them with relevant intelligence data as needed or requested. The head of the Intelligence Department is Grand Admiral Lord Samuel Keahi, Baron of Molokai on Arcadia, and his Chief of Staff is General Sir Guy Montague.


Supply and Procurement

The Supply and Procurement Department oversees the AFRF's logistics, acquiring and managing the supplies the service needs on all of the worlds it maintains forces. This is one of the larger bureaucracies of the AFRF due to the need to maintain forces on three hundred worlds, including needing to deal with suppliers at local, planetary, and interstellar levels. The current head of the Department, known as the Quartermaster-General, is Senior Air Marshal Lady Ophelia Newson, Baroness of Carcer on Coriscana. Her Chief of Staff is Admiral Sir Feodor Rosinsky.


Medical

The Medical Department oversees the operations of the AFRF's Medical Corps, Field Hospital Service, Naval Medical Service, and Veteran Hospital System. They are responsible for organizing the doctors, surgeons, corpsmen, and nurses that tend to the sick, injured, and wounded of the AFRF's personnel, seeing to the training and proper employment of medical personnel, regulating the conditions and operation of field hospitals, naval vessel infirmaries, mobile surgical units, and casualty clearing stations, and operating the network of Veterans' Hospitals and Medical Centers that tend to the needs of retired AFRF personnel under the laws of the Royal Federation. It is one of the AFRF Departments that includes a substantial number of civilian personnel, although they primarily serve in administration, training, and the Veteran Hospital System. The head of the Department is Field Marshal Doctor Sir Sherman Potter, his Chief of Staff is Air Marshal-General Doctor Dame Jordan Cavanaugh.


Military Education

The Military Education Department is responsible for general oversight and organization for the training and recruitment of all AFRF personnel, in cooperation with the other services and departments. They operate all Basic Training Camps, Naval Training Centers, Officer Commissioning Schools, and Advanced Specialty Training Schools in the Royal Federation, as well as the major military academies such as Sanglamore, the Nagelring, and Ayrshire. The Department also operates the Royal Service System that, when applicable by planetary and Federation law, drafts citizens into the AFRF for service (typically in the Militia or Naval Transport Command). The Department is led by Grand Admiral Lady Patricia Proctor and her Chief of Staff, General Sir Mark Odingo.


Personnel

The task of managing the assignment of millions of people across multiple service branches is too great for any single department, so the AFRF maintains an independent Personnel Department to do the job of managing the assignment and ongoing support of all uniformed and civilian personnel in the AFRF. Everything from payroll to uniform issuance to promotions goes through the Personnel Department. Stints with the Department are common for service personnel, especially among combat branches who are loath to trust Personnel without feeling properly represented among the decision-makers of the Department. Currently the department is led by Field Marshal Lord Rama Umayr with Air Marshal-General Dame Rhonda Michaels as the Chief of Staff.


Engineering Corps

The AFRF Engineering Corps Department is a small but elite organization that helps to plan out military fortifications and oversees military construction projects. They have a close connection to the Navy and provide the bulk of military manpower for the shipyards across the Federation. The Engineering Corps is also available to assist in civil engineering projects at the request of local and planetary government. Every officer of the Department is a graduate of a major military academy by default (particularly Ayrshire and Sanglamore), as completion of a Military Engineering Program is a prerequisite for service in the Engineering Corps. The current head of the Department is Field Marshal Dame Bethany Verdes-Shameel. Her Chief of Staff is Admiral Sir Nigel Kibaki.


Judge Advocate General's Office

The Department of the Judge Advocate General is responsible for all aspects involving military law. This includes providing advice to military field commanders as to the laws of war and their applicability to orders and investigating and prosecuting violations of military law by the members of the AFRF as laid out in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The JAG Office oversees military attorneys, legal researchers, and investigators, as well as clerical workers, and is authorized to hire civilian personnel for the research role as well as certifying civilian attorneys to practice in military courts (as one of the rights of AFRF personnel is to hire civilian representation to oversee their defense). The JAG Office also provides personnel experienced in naval law to work with the Admiralty Courts. The head of the Department, typically addressed as the Judge Advocate General, is Senior Air Marshal Sir Jack Waterston. His Chief of Staff is General Sir Robert Penton-MacIntyre.


Investigation and Enforcement

The Investigation and Enforcement Department operates the Military Police and Investigative services, which are responsible for dealing with criminal activity in the AFRF, and the AFRF Accountability and Oversight Office, which maintains the administrative machinery to deal with everything from supply contractor malfeasance to abuse of AFRF funds and resources by personnel. Since various planetary and Royal Federation laws complicate the ability of military law enforcement to deal with civilians, the AFRF's Military Criminal Investigative Service employs civilian law enforcement agents trained in the same facilities as the Royal Federation's other law enforcement agencies. These agents are often the only civilians with any authority on military vessels or in military bases, and while part of an AFRF Department, answer to a civilian-appointee Agency Director like any other Federation-level agency, typically chosen by the head of the Department among appointments suggested by the Justice Secretary. The head of the Department is Grand Admiral Lady Abigail Bishop. Her Chief of Staff is Air Marshal-General Sir Joachim Klupp.


Mercenary Relations

This Department employs analysts, researchers, and JAG-provided attorneys to conduct contract negotiations with mercenary representatives as well as to keep an up-to-date listing of available and active mercenary units to assist in either hiring or should they be an opposing force in an operation. The Mercenary Relations Department also maintains a Mercenary Quartermaster's Office connected to the Supply and Procurement Department, for mercenaries with contracts that allow them access to the AFRF's logistics network. The current head of the office is Field Marshal Sir Sylvester Balboa. His Chief of Staff is General Dame Helen Fubuki.



Federation Office of Intelligence and Security

The Royal Federation's intelligence and security services are a collection of institutions under the direct oversight of the Privy Council, with the Minister of Security providing the responsible political authority for what is typically known as the OIS in intelligence and military circles. Parliament does not directly control the OIS but does authorize its yearly budget at request of the Privy Council, giving the legislature some leverage over the organization. The ministry is a thin layer of administrative offices to connect the agencies with each other, as each grew organically separate until bonded by High King Ethan in the 3078 reforms, which separated the Foreign Office from the operations of intelligence.

SIS: The Security and Information Service are the primary institution for intelligence gathering and analysis in the Federation government. It consists of multiple departments that answer to the Director of SIS. The Counter-Intelligence Department handles tracking suspected foreign operatives and agents and investigating suspected security leaks. The External Operations Department oversees SIS intelligence-gathering operations outside of the Federation. The Security Information Department is responsible for analyzing all information gathered for dissemination to the authorities. The Government Security Department oversees bodyguard detachments and protection details for all government ministers and high functionaries, including the members of the Privy Council, and the grounds of the main government offices. It also provides counter-intelligence specialists to monitor internal threats to the Federation like active insurgencies, political or religious extremists, and separatist movements.

ESO: The Electronic Security Office is responsible for overseeing training and operation of ELINT assets in conjunction with the other services, electronic security measures for Federation government installations, and assisting the other OIS organizations with electronic and cybersecurity matters.

RSS: The Royal Security Service are responsible for the protection of the monarch and their family, including all individuals within the immediate line of succession not on military deployment, and the grounds of the Royal Palace in Roslyn and the House Proctor Estate in New Salem. The Royal Palaces of Tharkad and Donegal have RSS teams overseeing their security in the event of royal occupation. While separate organizations, the RSS often cross-trains with the Royal Lifeguards Regiment and the Household Guards Corps for purposes of coordination given their overlapping responsibilities.

PSO: The Parliamentary Security Office is the independent branch of security specialists who see to the protection of the members of Parliament and the Palace of Parliament complex.

FCIO: The Federal Criminal Investigation Office is officially under the jurisdiction of the Justice Office as the responsible organization for dealing with criminal activity that spans beyond the jurisdiction of local, planetary, and regional criminal authorities. Their duties include collaboration with the OIS where criminal investigation overlaps with intelligence issues.

IOO: The Irregular Operations Office are not so much an organization as a top layer of high-level analysts and liaisons from the AFRF Special Forces Command and SIS External Operations. They are responsible for the selection and use of Special Operations Teams and other covert operatives for high-risk operations inside and outside the Federation. This includes "black ops" and other "wetwork" missions that are kept highly classified. The IOO answers to the Minister of Security through their director, but for several reasons their activities rarely cross the desks of any higher officials, much less the monarch.




Marches and Theaters

As a political measure for improved governance, the Royal Federation was from the beginning organized into distinct marches and principalities. Over time these marches — including the principalities that have remained — have shifted and changed to accommodate the realm's larger size, but their existence remains an important element of the Federation's internal structure. As such the AFRF organizes at the march level as well, both in the organization of militia divisions at march level and the March Defense Commands.

But for improved higher-level command, the AFRF organizes its March Commands into Theater Commands. These have no political element; they are purely military administrative commands, typically under a four star flag officer with a large headquarters staff from personnel of the various departments. Theater Commands direct the movements and operations of all units assigned in their areas, whether they are part of a corps or not, although certain day-to-day matters are relegated to the Corps commanders to sort out. Not all theaters are equal in number of worlds or marches under their control, they are organized by anticipated threats and need for command oversight. As a result, theaters on the more active borders tend to be smaller, since they are the most likely to face heavy combat and need greater command focus locally.

The Theaters of the Royal Federation are organized as such:

Arcadia Theater	Arcadian Royal March, Dar-es-Salaam March, Silver Hawk Republic Free State, Concord Free State, Bolan Principality
Donegal Theater	Donegal Royal March, Alarion March, Arc-Royal March
Arcturus Theater	Arcturus March, Porrima March, Alexandria March
Skye Theater	Skye Royal March, Principality of Hesperus, New Earth March
Atreus Theater	Principality of Atreus, Stewart March, New Dallas March

 

[Steve]

AFRF Structure and Doctrine


The Armed Forces of the Royal Federation have adapted the traditional SLDF unit structure in many ways, although with innovations and alterations based off even older historical practices and the experiences of the services since their inception. In practice, some of the larger units listed have only existed as paper units for exercises, strategic studies, or for immediate campaigns. In general everything above the regiment/brigade level for armies exists only as a possible organization, typically because larger formations are a mixture of types and not purely of one or the other. The Royal Navy likewise practices a loose form of the planned force structure due to its available assets, with flotillas, strike groups, squadrons, and battle fleets as the highest organizational element typically in service.

While other Successor States tend to likewise dispense OmniMechs and other OmniPod-using combat craft in this fashion, the AFRF is noted for its "Omni Mafia" insisting on employing the technology as widely as possible; from the technology's first widespread deployment in 3038 up to now, it has authorized many OmniMechs and OmniVehicles for its field units, encouraging expanded production. The end result is a military with the best-equipped units being made up almost entirely of OmniMechs, and even less-prestigious units enjoying widespread access to such machines, if typically older models using restored Star League-level technology instead of the superior post-Star League Terran engines and materials.

This does make AFRF units heavier on the back end of things, however. OmniPods may allow for incredible tactical flexibility on campaign, but they require more maintenance work by MechTechs as well as complicating equipment repair, since often the pods themselves either have to be replaced or at least removed for repair, adding to the labor man-hours required in the hangars and motor pools. In general AFRF technician details are at least 33% larger than other services to meet these needs, increasing supply and transport costs in the process and requiring higher recruitment numbers into the technical services to meet service needs. Logistics costs are further increased by the need for bringing more and varied armaments in OmniPods to make full use of the technology, whereas conventional BattleMechs need only have spares for one set of weapons and equipment.

In terms of combined operations, the AFRF forms Operational Forces or OpForces out of specific regiments, brigades, aerospace forces, and naval units, who can sometimes be placed in an Operational Group for command for multi-system combat operations. OpForces are provisionally commanded by three star officers while four star officers command OpGroups.



Force Composition

When it was founded the AFFM was molded by the vestiges of SLDF organization and doctrine. From this base, the AFFM and succeeding AFRF would continually refine and reform itself in the face of hard-won experience on the battlefields of the Inner Sphere, absorbing in the process the institutional experience and knowledge of the Federation's component parts. The rudimentary combined arms tactics of the 30th Century has become tried and true methods that reached their pinnacle of practice in the Fourth Succession War.

A particular evolution that came about in the early Second Age of War was the development of the "square" regiment, with four battalions instead of three, for 'Mech, armor, and infantry formations. This gives each regiment more flexibility in meeting tactical challenges at the cost of a wider command structure and greater logistical and spacelift requirements. Artillery regiments are the exception due to the number of weapon platforms involved, with many artillery regiments being a single battalion in size, or two at most.

Some regiments in the Army carry the designation of "Royal". The Royal formations are by design drawn from the personnel of the entire AFRF and will mix soldiers and officers from across the Federation. A Royal regiment may have a colonel from Atreus, lieutenant colonels from Bolan, Skye, New Dallas, and Arcadia, and their majors from four other worlds. They are personnel with highly-marked fitness and performance records. For armor and infantry regiments, bearing this designation typically means assignment to the Royal and Household Guards or the various Royal Corps like the Royal Lancers or Royal Cuirassiers.

The remaining regiments are primarily drawn by planet or, in some cases, by march. These formations are generally referred to as Federal regiments. When placed in major combat commands they typically serve with the regional corps like the Marik Regulars or Donegal Guards. Some may actually be recruited by local authorities for the planetary militia and inducted into the Federal Army to meet requirements. A relatively small number of these federal regiments enjoy the Royal designation as well due to past successes in campaigns, such formations typically add royal insignia to their unit patches and are sometimes assigned to serve in the Royal Corps formations instead of Federal units.



BattleMech Units

The BattleMech has been the primary means of dominating ground combat for seven hundred years. The AFRF's BattleMech regiments are the main striking arm of the Army. As such they are the central component of most combat command formations.

At the tactical level, BattleMechs are organized around lances and companies of similar weight and capability, which are grouped into larger battalions of more diverse characteristics. The exact TO&E of a regiment is decided upon by the command staff of that formation and available material that the Supply and Procurement Department can provide. OmniMechs make up a sizable portion of the TO&E of most regiments, usually numbering over half of a regiment's machines. This permits many formations to be adjusted as needs require. A harassing lance of light 'Mechs can become ambushers or scouts. A heavy line company can be made into fire support machines. These alternate potential roles can be demanding on AFRF MechWarriors and many formations practice multiple roles during wargaming and exercises.

The combination of industry and research complexes in the Federation allows for a number of unique BattleMech designs. Defiance Industries' major plants on Hesperus produce 'Mechs like the Atlas III, Ragnarok, Mad Cat II, and Leopard. Arcadia's own Selassie DefenseWorks has a number of respected designs like the iconic Paladin and Sabaton. The newest marks of most of these machines are OmniMechs with Terran-grade technology, but even the older models with the Star League standard that was the best in the Successor States a century ago still find use in the regiments, especially in the regional formations like the Free March Corps or the Donegal Guards.

Even older machines are found in the Federal Militia regiments and the Dragoons. These machines from the Renaissance-era, or further back, have only some pieces of Star League technology integrated into them, or are entirely made of older technology standards.


Armored and Vehicle Units

BattleMechs are the most dominant force on the modern battlefield, but their relative fewer numbers make all armies reliant upon the armored vehicle that has served as a major force in warfare for eleven centuries. It is common to find at least three vehicles per BattleMech in every combat command.

Vehicles are more varied in function, mass, and motive means than 'Mechs. They are typically organized at the platoon level, with companies and above having the potential to be of mixed type. A recon company may employ platoons of dedicated scout VTOLs, harassing hover vehicles, and wheeled or tracked APCs or IFVs carrying spotting teams for fire support missions, if the TO&E of a regiment calls for it. The diversity of vehicles within a company, battalion, or regiment is determined by the intended operational role of the formation. OmniVehicle use increases the flexibility of many formations and allows for easier logistics given the widespread use of OmniPods in 'Mech and aerospace formations as well.

After the fall of the Star League, vehicle production often became the sole source of new war material for worlds that could not afford imports. In some cases licensed production of existing vehicles like the Scorpion, Bulldog, Vedette, and Warrior VTOL was possible. But the costs of the licenses caused many companies to see to their own new, unique designs. Reddington Arsenal of Concord, Atrean Armaments, Bolan Armor Factory, Defiance Industries, and a number of other manufacturers produced a multitude of new designs through the 30th and 31st Centuries; tanks like the Arjun, the Bastion, and the Diamondback. Both of these categories are still in widespread use today, in both militia formations and the Federal regiments. The Royal formations enjoy newer machines like the Rhino, Razor, and Whippoorwill as well as modernized updates of the older machines as their resources allow.


Infantry Units

Infantry are the core of any modern army, but no combat branch has undergone as many radical changes the past century and a half. Two hundred years ago only the Terrans had battle armor suits, but following the Renaissance-era spread of that technology and the later mass production of lighter powered armor infantry suits brought on by the Terran War's bloody lessons, armored infantry is now the standard for the AFRF and the other armies of the Successor States.

In the AFRF infantry regiments are built around specific roles. Motorized or foot infantry formations are defensive formations that typically remain limited to the basic 200 kg Standard Armor Suit. Mechanized infantry employs IFVs and APCs to allow infantry to accompany vehicle and 'Mech forces into combat. Airmobile infantry use battle armor and power armor suits with built-in jump capability that lets them function as the descendants of the jump infantry of prior centuries. Assault infantry typically use heavier armor suits for dealing with thick enemy defenses. Further specialized roles like combat engineers, sappers, and special operations forces have their own armored suits that provide unique capabilities fitting their tactical battlefield roles.

Battle armor infantry, with suits of 750 kilograms to 2 tons mass, remain a potent force multiplier. Squad sizes are smaller, resulting in changes to larger formation numbers and battlefield tactics and operational use.

Officially a formation is considered armored infantry if two or more battalions of infantry use these heavier suits instead of the lighter power armor, though the regiments are still designated according to their battlefield role (Rangers, Jaegers, Grenadiers, etc). Only a handful of legacy armored infantry regiments consist entirely of battle armor infantry battalions and are officially designated as "Armored Infantry". The armored infantry regiments are predominately royal formations that operate alongside the Royal Guards, Household Guards, or as part of specialist units like the Strikers or the Royal Assault Regiments. The remaining royal or federal formations have at least a battalion worth of battle armor infantry, with a few having only one or two companies with specialist capabilities.

This makes infantry rather more expensive than it was in the earlier eras, even under the SLDF and the golden era of the Star League. The compensation is that infantry is far more capable now, with armor suits that can allow troopers to survive the anti-infantry weapons that slaughter unarmored infantry by the squad, and battle armor especially mounting weaponry and equipment that let these suits challenge BattleMechs more directly than the old anti-'Mech specialist formations. Infantry has always been important in holding ground, but with these changes to the battlespace, they once more play a key role in taking it first.

The Federal March Militia, and planetary militias, have older armor suits as well, but in substantially lower quantities. Even the best-kitted federal militia regiments may only have mixed battalions of armored and unarmored infantry that give them, at best, six to seven companies of suits. The majority of militia infantry, especially planetary militia, remain the unarmored conventional infantry of old, employing refurbished APCs and motor vehicles for transport and field guns for anti-armor weaponry. Some efforts are under way to provide more armor suits to these formations given their historic experience against armor suited-infantry but even mass production techniques cannot bring the costs down enough to fully outfit every regiment. To be in any way effective they must man field works and fortified positions to offset their lack of powered armor suits. Most of these militia soldiers spend their time seeing to natural disasters or providing security during civil unrest.


Aerospace and Naval Units

Control over airspace and protection of spacelift transport are vital elements of a modern military. The AFRF's Aerospace Forces provide both, fielding both aerospace and conventional aircraft in defense of worlds, ships, and troops. Every combat command formation has an aerospace element attached with an appropriate command structure. In addition independent aerospace formations support the defense of systems, space stations, and planets.

Following lessons learned in the Terran War the AFRF altered its aerospace system away from the regular Inner Sphere practices during the Succession Wars and Collapse. The basic flight unit was expanded from two aircraft to four and further structural changes made to maintain a force structure the Federation's resources could maintain while having sufficient number and tactical flexibility in major combat operations. Flights are almost always made up of the same model of craft, though with OmniFighters the loadout may vary depending on the pilots' capabilities and tactical mission. Squadrons are typically all of the same model with some exceptions. These exceptions usually stem from availability issues but sometimes operational necessity, especially if a lack of OmniFighters limits the ability to reconfigure the aircraft for different needed roles, or if the squadron is part of a smaller formation and needs to bring a wider variety of capabilities into operations. Wings are where diversity in size becomes possible, as mixed wings by weight and function are known. At group-level and beyond universality is nearly unheard of as flexibility is the overriding requirement.

When employed in support of frontline ground formations, most formations are mixed between aerospace craft and conventional fighters. The latter exist primarily to provide ground strike support or mid-range airstrike potential, allowing the heavier and more survivable aerospace fighters to maintain control of the skies and space.

The industrial might of the AFRF would alone ensure a significant capability for native aerospace production. Gienah Aerospace Industries, TharDef, and Defiance Industries ensure the AFRF has a steady supply of top-flight fighter like the Typhoon, Darter and Great Eagle. Newer marks of classical fighters likewise exist, with the most favored being the Sabre III interceptor and Lightning III strike fighter. The conventional wings include a number of designs made across the Federation, with the best formations getting fusion-powered aircraft like the Helldiver, Frogfoot, and Thunderstrike. Aerospace formations can also include light DropShips built for ground support combat operations. Craft like the Bark and Wild Weasel fire support gunships supplement the fighters, descending into atmospheres to engage the enemy with heavy ordnance and suppress any threat to an LZ or a battle line.

The Aerospace Force typically handles ground-based aerospace units. While they train for space combat as well, it is the Royal Navy's Fleet Aerospace Arm and System Patrol Service pilots who train and operate in that environment throughout their careers. The pilots of the Fleet Aerospace Arm fly the best fighters the AFRF can procure for them and are among the most intensely-trained, best-drilled pilots of the Successor States. The Navy's Transport Command is also responsible for the spacelift assigned to Army and Aerospace field formations. Everything from Bastion-class Command Transports to Trefoil-class Logistics Transports falls under their purview, ferrying troops, equipment, and supplies between star systems and combat zones.

The Navy's combat power is concentrated in its fleet of WarShips and supporting DropShips. Astute-class Fleet Pickets, Sagittarius-class Missile Pickets, Majestic-class carriers, and other DropShips of varying size and capabilities are assigned to the fleets and individual WarShips to support them in combat operations. Combat DropShips over of over 50,000 tons weight capacity A variety of classes remain in the fleet, going from the light Jaguar-class corvettes to the mammoth Tamarind-class AFS Skye. The growing threat of Combine and Oriento-Capellan naval construction is giving the Navy a boost in construction that will expand its power in the coming years, starting with next year's commissioning of the new AFS Tharkad, a capital battleship of such a size to challenge the limits of conventional K-F drive capacity. Her sister ships — Campbelton, Hesperus, and Alarion — will follow through the remainder of the decade, as will the first two Dauntless-class battlecruisers Dauntless and Fearless, presuming High King Nathaniel does not intervene.

While not mobile, a multitude of major armed space stations and shipyard facilities can be found across the Royal Federation, and all are kept under Royal Navy command. Duncan Station and Artemis Shipyard Complex at Arcadia, McQuiston Station at Skye, Marsden Station at Donegal, and the newly-built Joshua Marik Station at Atreus are heavily-armed for self-defense and positioned either over important worlds, those worlds' moons, or at jump points. Smaller battle stations protect the march capitals' jump points and the vital nodes of the Royal Road, the network of recharge stations that now spans every march capital and of the Federation and is being expanded towards key border systems and major central points along alternative jump routes.



Army Combat Commands

The basic strategic element of the AFRF's Army forces is the Combat Command. These are forces varying in size under the command of a lower-ranked flag officer, a Brigadier or a Major General, who can operate as one coherent strategic-level force or as a component to a larger operational command.


Combat Divisions

The Combat Division represents the culmination of the military reforms of Lord Alexander Proctor and High King Thomas, formalized by High King Ethan in the 3078 Army Reform. Divisions are meant to fight alone if needed with plentiful support elements built around a BattleMech regiment, typically one of the best of the AFRF's line regiments by practice. The standard doctrine calls for a BattleMech regiment supported by at least three regiments of armored vehicles, a battalion of artillery guns, an air regiment with three-wing air groups of aerospace fighters and conventional strike fighters, and an infantry brigade of five regiments.


Regimental Combat Teams (RCTs)

The predecessor formation of the Combat Division, RCTs remain a mainstay on the roster. The AFRF RCT was first formalized by the military reforms of Lord Alexander Proctor due to the lessons of the Second Skye and Second Andurien Wars. Based around a regiment of BattleMechs, RCTs call for a minimum force of an armored brigade of two vehicular regiments, an artillery battalion, an aviation battalion of VTOLs, an air regiment of two-wing air groups of aerospace and conventional fighters, and three infantry regiments. For a time it appeared that they would be phased out in favor of combat divisions but the losses of the Fourth Succession War saw the return of the formation to wide use over the division.


Combat Brigades

A number of units require greater economy of spacelift asserts and are considered brigades. They are typically built around a regiment of BattleMechs but their support forces can vary wildly in composition based upon the role of the unit in question, though at minimum they will have a regiment of armored infantry and an aerospace wing attache.


Combat Regiments

Regimental combat commands are rarer in the AFRF, at least above militia level. Some are BattleMech regiments with sparse support elements while others are regiment-sized combined arms formations with a mix of battalions of 'Mechs, vehicles, and infantry. They will also have at least one wing of aerospace fighters attached.


Federal Militia

The Federal March Militia are a number of brigades organized around BattleMech regiments and assigned to lead the defense of specific worlds within the principalities, marches, and free states of the Federation. Each March Militia formation includes at least one 'Mech regiment with conventional regimental support. They are staffed by a combination of recruits and older service personnel no longer serving on the frontline. March Militias are typically under the command of a military staff that answers to the governing authority of a march. They are as often deployed for humanitarian assistance during natural disasters or to assist in other civil affairs projects as they are used for military purposes. Under the Royal Federation's laws, they can be called to federal service under the AFRF's local theater and march commanders, including re-deployment outside of their home areas, though the latter has never been done regardless of the legal authority for the measure.

Armaments wise, the Federal March Militia have primarily hand-me-downs from the regular forces, or units pulled from salvage yards and refurbished. They are not frontline forces in quality, nor are they expected to be. But their capability on the defense is not to be underestimated.


Planetary Militia

Planetary Militia are local forces raised by planetary authorities. The great majority are infantry forces with supporting VTOL, conventional air, and armor forces. Planetary governments fund and oversee these forces within the scope of the Planetary Defense Support Act of 3102. Rank structures are regulated to conform to AFRF standards although specific rank titles, as well as uniform standards, do not need to fit AFRF regulations. These militia formations do not fall under AFRF control unless the planetary, march, or theater commanders have invoked the Militia Command Defense Act, allowing AFRF personnel to assume authority over the deployment of these militia formations during system invasions or active warfare in a march or theater. In size they vary by worlds, from the small battalions for re-colonized worlds to armies of multiple brigades on major planets near hostile borders. In addition to planetary defense, these militia train in disaster aid, search-and-rescue, and other civil assistance efforts.

Technologically these formations tend to field the oldest and least-capable equipment. BattleMechs are rare and never seen beyond lance or company level. Vehicles are primarily petroleum-burning models. Battle armor and power armor are rare to non-existent among these formations and they are generally the only formations left that use non-powered infantry field and combat gear, though some still enjoy aerial or mechanized transport means.


Navy Combat Groups

The Royal Navy employs a long-established tiered system of commands for operational use. As with the army, it has a variety of command sizes and structures at the basic strategic level, but as operational requirements can vary, some of these units are themselves parts of larger formations that are not elements of an ad hoc OpForce or OpGroup.


Battle Fleet

The Battle Fleet formation was established during the War of Donegalian Succession to face the might of the Oriento-Capellan Imperial fleet, and would be further refined in the Terran War until Grand Admiral Julia Andros' final reforms in the fleet rebuilding following the battles for Terra. The Battle Fleets are the main concentrated fists of naval power, based around a Flagship Squadron with a capital-scale WarShip and its attached flotillas of DropShips, a Cruiser Squadron of two heavy armored cruisers and their DropShip flotillas, a Screening Squadron of frigates, destroyers, and corvettes with supporting fleet and picket DropShips, and a Missile Squadron of heavy missile-armed frigates, destroyers, and corvettes with missile-carrying DropShips.


Strike Force

Strike Force formations are primarily common among the System Patrol Service when executing a large-scale patrol operation. This is the designation employed when the Royal Navy puts multiple squadrons of DropShips into common operational commands without assigning WarShips. They are not often seen and so have no regular structure or layout.


Squadrons

Squadrons can either be elements of a battle fleet or operate independently, where they are typically referred to as Independent Squadrons or Light Squadrons. Commonly these will be three to seven WarShips led by a cruiser with supporting DropShip elements. An Independent Squadron is led by an armored or heavy cruiser with supporting frigates and destroyers while a Light Squadron is led by a frigate or light cruiser with supporting destroyers and corvette, each WarShip (save corvettes) the focal point of a flotilla with their DropShips. Corvettes, which tend to not carry jump collars, are usually employed in pairs for flotillas.

The System Patrol Service employs formations of Patrol Group which are effectively squadrons of DropShips operating together around a common flagship, usually a picket warship or an aerospace fighter carrier.



Aerospace Combat Commands


The Aerospace Force's strength is divided into groups assigned to Army formations and wider formations assigned to the protection of worlds across the Royal Federation. The majority of planetary-defense aerospace units are the squadrons and wings that back up the local militia. Major industrial worlds, march and theater command worlds, and the Federation's major political capital worlds typically enjoy dedicated aerospace regiments and divisions assigned to their defense. Sometimes these formations are detached to joined OpForces or OpGroups if deemed absolutely necessary on offensive operations, but more commonly they are permanently maintained on planetary defense duty.


Aerospace Division

These large-scale formations are only seen in half a dozen cases across the Federation, guarding capital systems. They consist of two or three aerospace regiments, two regiments of conventional atmospheric fighters, and a supporting wing of DropShips.


Aerospace Regiment

A dedicated planetary defense formation, most of these are found on the various march capitals across the Federation, consisting of two or more groups of aerospace fighters, two groups of conventional atmospheric fighters, and a supporting squadron of DropShips.



AFRF Unit Organization Tables

AFRF BattleMech Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Lance		4 BattleMechs		4 BattleMechs
Company		3 Lances		12 BattleMechs
Battalion		3 Companies + Command Lance		40 BattleMechs
Reinforced Battalion		4 Companies + Command Lance		52 BattleMechs
Regiment		4 Battalions + Command Company		172-220 BattleMechs
Division (Theoretical)		3-4 Regiments		396-880 BattleMechs
AFRF Vehicle Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Platoon		4 vehicles		4 vehicles
Company		3 Platoons		12 vehicles
Battalion		3 Companies + Command Platoon		40 vehicles
Reinforced Battalion		4 Companies + Command Platoon		52 vehicles
Regiment		4 Battalions + Command Company		172-220 vehicles
Brigade		2-4 Regiments		344-880 vehicles
AFRF Artillery Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Section		1 gun		1 gun
Platoon		4 sections		4 guns
Battery		3 platoons		12 guns
Battalion		3 batteries		36 guns
Regiment		2-4 battalions		72-144 guns
AFRF Infantry Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Fire Team		4 troops		4 troops
Squad		3 fire teams		12 troops
Platoon		2 squads + Command Section		28 troops
Company		3 Platoons + Command Squad		96 troops
Battalion		3 Companies + HQ		320 troops
Reinforced Battalion		4 Companies + HQ		416 troops
Regiment		4 Battalions + HQ		1,280-1,664 troops
Brigade		2-5 Regiments + HQ		2,560-8,320 troops
Division		2-4 Brigades		5,120-33,280 troops
AFRF Battle Armor Infantry Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Squad		6 troops		6 troops
Platoon		4 squads		24 troops
Company		3 platoons + Command Squad		78 troops
Battalion		4 companies		312 troops
Reinforced Battalion		5-6 companies		390-468 troops
Regiment		4 battalions		1,248-1,872 troops
AFRF Aerospace Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Flight		4 fighters		4 fighters
Squadron		3 flights		12 fighters
Wing		2 squadrons + Command Flight		28 fighters
Group		2-4 wings + Command Squadron		68-124 fighters
Regiment		2-3 groups		136-372 fighters
Division		2-4 regiments + DropShip squadron		284-1,500 craft
AFRF Naval Organization
Element		Component Units		Combat Strength
Flotilla		2-6 ships		2-6 ships
Squadron		2 flotillas		4-12 ships
Strike Force (DropShip Only)		2+ squadrons		8-48+ ships
Battle Fleet		2+ squadrons		16-96+ ships

 

[Steve]

Mercenary Companies

The AFRF has hired a number of mercenary units to help shore up defenses along critical borders, even though the Concert of the Sphere has led to very little fighting in the last twenty years (at least compared to the warring and skirmishing of the Second Age of War). The following formations are only for those directly hired through the MBCB's offices and does not include those formations that have long-term relationships with the AFRF and are effectively considered House troops. The numbers are lower than is usual due to the recent end of a number of contracts. The AFRF had anticipated adding more mercenaries to the rolls but High King Nathaniel's peace policies have left Mercenary Relations uncertain about finalizing anticipated contracts without further Command Staff guidance.


The Gravediggers
CO: Brigadier-General Christopher Hoyal
1st Gravediggers CO: Colonel Adam Hoyal
2nd Gravediggers CO: Colonel Jennifer Freeman

The Gravediggers recently ended a long contract with the Kilbourne Suns' Concord that saw them take part in the fiercest fighting in the Outworlds campaigns against the Draconis Combine. Both formations are combat tried and tested as a result. The First fields a significant quantity of high quality machines between the battlefield salvage claims against the DCMS and recent purchases of new equipment permitted by their contract with the Royal Federation. They are assigned to the the defense of the Stewart March, with the First Gravediggers posted to Helm and the Second to Stewart itself.


The Mother-Flakkers
CO: Brigadier Alex Conrad

One of many formations born in the early Second Age of War, the Mother-Flakkers are, as their near-crude moniker indicates, a mercenary outfit well-trained for air defense roles with a variety of 'Mechs and vehicle formations and supporting light armored infantry. They favor OmniVehicles and OmniMechs so they can alter their loadouts quickly to deal with different levels of enemy aerospace or VTOL aerial platforms. The unit was nearly destroyed fighting for the Federated Suns in the Fourth Succession War and have rebuilt back to regimental strength on repeated garrison contracts. In 3140 they signed a four year contract with the AFRF to contribute to the garrison of Atreus.


Astoc's Army
CO: Colonel Angelina Astoc

Another creation of the Second Age of War, Astoc's Army are garrison specialists, employing primarily vehicular and infantry forces to allow for cheap, effective defensive work. They are a strong brigade the size of a conventional AFRF Combat Division. Astoc's Army recently agreed to a three year extension on their garrison contract with the AFRF on the condition of not being assigned to face the DCMS or the Empire. This condition was accepted and the brigade was placed on the reclaimed world of Qualip on the border with Rasalhague and the Communal League. They have settled into the world quite well and many of the mercenaries have taken to the rough frontier living, reminding many of them of their own homes in the Near Periphery.


Hamilton's Land-Air Brigade
CO: General Arnold Hamilton-Okonkwo

A combined arms specialist formation dating from early 31st Century, founded by retired personnel from the Crucis Pact. The Land-Air Brigade had a proud history during the Fourth Succession War fighting for the Oriento-Capellan Empire on the Atrean and Principate fronts. But the shift of power towards Liaoism prompted the brigade to refuse a post-Dieron contract extension and find other employment. Through much of the last decade they have been fighting in the Outworlds, giving their new generation of recruits a wellspring of hard-won combat experience. In 3139 they accepted a five year contract from the AFRF and have been assigned to the industrial world of Gladius in the Principality of Hesperus. Mercenary Relations was sounding the unit out for an early extension until recently, though no explanation has been given for the change.


Arano's Marauders
CO: Colonel Carlo Arano

The Marauders are a legend of the Inner Sphere with a long association with the Aurigan Reach. They played a big part in High Lord Tamati putting down his brother-in-law Santiago's coup attempt of 3022, and during the Terran War were often giving the TUDF fits with their deep raids, including joining Operation SERPENT itself. During the Fourth Succession War their raids were so vital to the Canopian-Andurien defense that the Marauders are considered by some to be the reason Andurien was held. Their current contract with the AFRF, negotiated in 3141 as a three year "operational readiness" deal, has raised eyebrows in the mercenary world. The Marauders are an offensive heavy raiding battalion of MechWarriors, not a garrison force, and their posting on Sabik argues against their use against the Combine. Some speculate they're a loaded gun aimed at the Azami over the AFAC's raiding campaigns, but others wonder if the AFRF may have other agendas in mind.




AFRF Uniforms

Personnel in the AFRF have an assortment of uniforms meant for specific duties and occasions. Some of these are particular to certain specialties and positions, like MechTechs' work jumpsuits or a MechWarrior's cooling suit, while others are general use for all positions.

Rank insignias are typically placed prominently on the collar, for officers, or the shoulders, for enlisted personnel. Service insignia, such as gold wings for an aerospace fighter pilot, a 'Mech on a shield for a MechWarrior, or crossed rifles on a shield for an armored infantry soldier, are often displayed on the lapel of a uniform collar or, for uncollared uniform coats, the right side of the chest.

Some units, due to historical tradition or their regional backgrounds, deviate from regular uniforms in various ways. As an example, members of the Skye Rangers wear kilts and tartans instead of trousers while in ceremonial dress. There is likewise an assortment of different headwear associated with some of the various corps of units. Pilots of flying craft, be they VTOLs, air-breathing conventional jet-driven aircraft, or aerospace fighters, will often wear wings denoting active flight status on their uniform coat shoulders or as a badge on the chest. Naval officers will employ black trim on the uniforms and cuff. Additionally, under regulation, permission is given for the wearing of culturally or religiously significant headwear and other pieces, whether it is the turban and kirpan of a Sikh or a headscarf for a committed Muslimah.


Field Dress

Field Dress Uniforms, FDUs, are worn for the personnel who man specific types of combat and support equipment. These specialty suits tend to be red in the torso areas with blue on the limb pieces. Armored infantry jumpsuits are an exception, typically found in olive (for Army personnel) or black-with-gold sleeves (for Marine battle armor troopers).

The standard issue MechWarrior FDU is a full body cooling suit threaded with mini-tubing to circulate coolant around the body. While this suit has been in mass production for a century and is therefore widely available to regular line units, in some federal militia or planetary militia Collapse-era cooling vests, MechWarrior shorts, and tank tops are still employed. Standard neurohelmets remain brown or gray in color and are based on Terran advancements during the Collapse that make them less cumbersome and more receptive, including the provision of a HUD display over the helmet faceplate for the pilot that augments their 'Mech's cockpit displays.

Aerospace pilots wear a full body g-suit and employ a specialized neurohelmet with the same advancements MechWarrior helmets enjoy.

Armored infantry personnel wear a jumpsuit configured to wick sweat and moisture away while in the confines of an armor suit and allow for a measure of comfort within the suit's padding without restricting movement.

Tanker FDUs are a dark green flak/circulation vest for the circulation of coolant or heating fluid depending upon combat environment, worn over regular BDUs except in hostile environments requiring environmental suits to go with the standard protective helmet and vest. Tank Commanders have a specialized helmet that allows them access to a holographic view of the external battlefield and "blink-typing" system access for further combat data and communications with other elements.


Battle Dress

Battle Dress Uniforms, sometimes called BDUs, can vary by function. There is one basic BDU that all AFRF personnel can wear as an alternative to their "duty reds". It is a loose-fitting red jacket displaying unit insignia, rank insignia, and name, matched to blue trousers. It is typically worn over whatever specialty FDUs are employed when personnel are on standby or in place of FDUs when personnel are not. Said Unit patches and rank insignia are typically on the arm, or ranks on the collar for officers, though only if space permits.

For hot weather environments, uniform shorts and lighter short-sleeved uniform shirts can be substituted (in the appropriate colors) but are rarely worn over specialty BDUs. A specialty red parka and blue thermal trousers are allowed for cold weather.


Duty Dress

For regular wear when not in field conditions, the Duty Dress Uniform is employed. It consists of a red low-collared jacket over a white or blue t-shirt with appropriate rank insignia on the arms (enlisted) or collar (commissioned officer), the branch insignia and name on the right breast, with blue trousers using a standard black belt with buckle. A red parka and thermal trousers variant is available when in cold weather conditions, while in warm weather conditions the warm weather BDUs are permitted as a substitute. The standard service cap, a blue peaked military cap with black visor with a white hawk on the cap front, is considered part of the uniform and should be worn outside of structures. It can be replaced by a different piece of headwear for those in units with traditional alternatives, such as Striker berets or Lancer shakos, or if a religiously-mandated piece of headwear is required.


Formal Dress

The Formal Dress Uniform, typically known as "formal reds" or "mess reds", is worn on occasions such as formal dinners, change of command ceremonies, court-martial proceedings, and non-state funerals. The uniform consists of a full-sleeved red uniform tunic coat with a folded collar, blue cuffs, and non-tasseled gold epaulets, with five gold buttons lining the front of the coat. The wearer will likewise wear aiguillettes of specific coloring and style depending upon their background and status. Examples include gold or silver aiguillettes on the right shoulder epaulet connected to the uniform breast for department heads or staff officers, double-looped silver aiguillettes on each shoulder for MechWarriors, double-looped brass aiguillettes on each shoulder for aerospace fighter pilots (with black piping for naval aerospace pilots), single-looped gold aiguillettes on the shoulders for armored vehicle officers, and two silver aiguillettes from left shoulder to breast for artillery officers. A blue uniform shirt is worn under the coat with red trousers held up by a black belt with a silver hawk buckle, the legs of the trousers bearing lines of blue along the outside. Black dress shoes or boots are worn on the feet, a pair of black socks underneath. Branch insignia are worn on the collar's lapel, a name tag on the right breast, and medals and ribbons on the left. Covers are required to be worn unless decorum demands their removal, either the standard service cap or regimental specialty headwear.


Ceremonial Dress

Ceremonial Dress Uniforms, or "dress reds" for short, are the most elaborate and ornamental set of uniforms. A red tunic coat is worn over a blue collarless dress shirt. Blue-trimmed red dress trousers go down to regulation footwear, a pair of polished black dress shoes, with the trousers held to the waist by a belt of stygian black with a gold hawk buckle. The coat has gold tasseled epaulets on the shoulders, where the wearer attaches aiguillettes like on formal uniforms. At the neck is a high folded collar where the branch specialty pin is placed upon the lapel. Five pairs of gold buttons travel down the chest of the uniform coat. On the blue arm cuffs are a pair of silver buttons and gold tim separating the cuffs from the red of the coat arms.

For enlisted personnel the rank insignia are stitched into the upper arms. Officers wear a rank pin on the collar and a blue and gold-trimmed Officer's Sash over the left shoulder and down to the lower right side at the edge of the waist. Graduates of specific academies are permitted to wear a second ash over the Officer's Sash marked with their academy's chosen colors and insignia. A gold-winged white hawk is displayed on the sash, up on the left breast, with medals and commendations worn below unless they are neck or necklet orders. Service ribbons are displayed below the sash on the left breast.



AFRF Rank Structure

The ranking system of the AFRF is based on a combination of SLDF practice and historical usages dating back to the 20th Century. Like many Inner Sphere house militaries Naval commands use an alternative naming list, even if under AFRF regulations the ranks are equivalent in base pay (before specialty considerations). As a result of the reforms after the Terran War, the Aerospace forces use their own ranking system for planet-based commands (including those assigned to regiments and brigades), while naval aerospace forces use naval ranks entirely.

Like most traditional militaries, the AFRF's ranks are divided into four categories: enlisted personnel, non-commissioned officer, commissioned officer or field officer, and general officer. The first two are drawn from volunteers and drafted personnel who have not yet graduated from either an Officer Commissioning School, the collegiate Reserve Officer Training or one of the Military Academies of the Royal Federation such as the Ayrshire Military Sciences Academy on Arcadia, the Nagelring on Tharkad, or Sanglamore on Skye.


Enlisted Ranks


Private/Crewman Recruit/Airman Recruit
The lowest rank, this is assigned to fresh volunteers or draftees into the AFRF, with the distinction decided by which branch they are assigned to after their completion of the AFRF Military Aptitudes Exam and the volunteer's listed preferences. Promotion out of this rank usually takes place after 4-6 months, although some personnel are returned to it as a result of punishment under military law and regulations. Instead of a rank insignia they typically wear an empty patch where the rank would normally go.

While the official rank title uses the "-man" suffix, it is common practice to employ "-woman" where appropriate.

Private/Crewman Apprentice/Airman
This is the basic rank of enlisted personnel of the AFRF. Their rank insignia is one raised chevron.

Private, First Class/Crewman/Airman, First Class
This rank is typically awarded to privates who perform their duties exceptionally, although it is not in favor with the entire AFRF. Soldiers of this rank are often tasked with greater responsibility to prepare them for promotion. The Navy makes wider use of the rank and short of disciplinary action it is granted to all enlisted personnel who complete three deployments or serve in position for twenty-four months, though meritorious promotion can come sooner. Their rank insignia is two raised chevrons.

Lance Corporal/Senior Crewman/Specialist
The highest rank for basic enlisted personnel, Lance Corporals and their equivalents are often in charge of small detachments of enlisted personnel, like an infantry fire team or the crew responsible for a specific aerospacecraft. Their rank insignia is two raised chevrons and one lowered chevron.



Non-Commissioned Officers


Corporal/Petty Officer/Corporal
The first non-commissioned officer rank. Corporals are often section leaders in infantry or oversee specific work details. They are the lowest-ranked MechWarriors as well, though most MechWarriors of this rank are found in militia. Their naval counterparts, petty officers, oversee work teams or perform specific duties with electronic gear they have been trained to operate and maintain. Their rank insignia is two raised chevrons and two lowered ones.

Sergeant/Petty Officer First Class/Air Sergeant
Sergeants form the backbone of the AFRF, with their experience qualifying them for wider command responsibilities such as squad leadership in infantry or command of vehicles, second-in-command of militia BattleMech lances or most regular rank MechWarriors in frontline formations, or working as immediate management in supply and other logistics commands. Petty Officers of this grade are given greater responsibilities and authority such as shift or watch command over a station or work area. They or Air Sergeants likewise direct the tasks of the support air crews for aerospace craft. Their rank insignia is three raised chevrons and two lowered ones.

Color Sergeant/Chief Petty Officer/Staff Sergeant
These veteran NCOs oversee greater numbers of enlisted personnel in their commands and are often tasked with seeing to the seasoning of newly-commissioned officers, especially those fresh out of the academy, as they often hold positions like second-in-command of a platoon or the senior NCO of a company or departmental work crew. Their rank insignia is three raised chevrons and two lowered ones with a star in the middle.

Master Sergeant/Senior Chief Petty Officer/First Sergeant
With over two decades of service to their name, these NCOs hold key positions in the management infrastructure of the AFRF. They are mentors, senior managers, and often advisors to senior field officers. Their rank insignia is three raised chevrons and two lowered ones with twin stars in the middle arranged side by side.

Sergeant Major/Master Chief Petty Officer/Sergeant Major
The men and women at this rank have power rivaling even field officers, as they often help oversee entire installations within the AFRF administrative structure or work as the senior NCOs of regiments, brigades, or full-sized ships. Many will have served for thirty years before reaching this rank. Their rank insignia is three raised chevrons and two lowered ones with three stars in the middle, arranged in a pyramid shape.

Command Sergeant Major/Command Master Chief Petty Officer/Command Sergeant Major
At this rank, the NCOs work side by side with the general officers in charge of combat commands or facilities, giving advice born from their long experience. They govern the promotions into the higher echelons of the AFRF's NCO rank structure. The most respected among them becomes the highest-ranked NCO of the major combat service branches, e.g. the Command Sergeant Major of the Army. The rank insignia for this rank are three raised chevrons and two lowered ones with a hawk insignia in the middle.


Commissioned Officers

Cadet/Officer-Candidate
A rank assigned to those still in officer training. Cadets are for academy students while personnel undergoing an Officer Commissioning School course are called Officer-Candidates for the duration of their education. They wear thin silver bars arranged into a row, each bar representing a year of military collegiate education.

Second Lieutenant/Ensign/Lieutenant
The lowest officer rank. Second Lieutenants command platoons of infantry or vehicles, second in command of line regiment 'Mech lances, or may serve as MechWarriors in specialist and guard regiment lances. In the Aerospace forces Lieutenants (or Ensigns) are the junior pilots of a Flight. Their rank insignia is a vertical silver bar.

First Lieutenant/Lieutenant (J.G.)/Flight Lieutenant
In infantry and vehicle commands they are only distinguishable by having the different rank insignia. They become the executive officers of infantry and vehicle companies or command specialist platoons as needed. First Lieutenants are typically lance commanders in BattleMech regiments, and are often referred to as "Lance Lieutenants" in this capacity, while Flight Lieutenants oversee flights of aircraft or aerospace craft. Their rank insignia is a vertical gold bar.

Captain/Lieutenant/Squadron Captain
These officers are the basic backbone of the officer corps, having a few years of experience to season them and prepare them for greater command responsibilities. In the army and aerospace contingents they command companies and squadrons. Naval Lieutenants usually serve as either detachment commanders on large ships or as control officers. Their rank insignia is two vertical gold bars with a hawk insignia set between them.

Major/Lieutenant Commander/Wing Commander
Majors are typically employed as the executive officers of battalions. Lieutenant Commanders oversee departments on large ships or may even command the smaller DropShips, or serve as executive officers on unarmed JumpShips. Wing Commanders are placed as the COs of aerospace wings. The rank insignia is three vertical gold bars with a hawk insignia over the middle bar.

Lieutenant Colonel/Commander/Group Captain
Once a major-rank officer has proven themselves as command material in battalion XO positions or through a command school program, they are raised to Lieutenant Colonel rank and often given their own battalions. In the Aerospace Force a group captain is executive commander of a group of at least two wings. Their naval counterparts often command unarmed JumpShips, transport DropShips, and smaller armed DropShips, command the Aerospace Groups on the carriers (they are often referred to by the acronym "CAG", for "Commander Aerospace Group"), or serve as the executive officers of WarShips. Their rank insignia is a silver hawk with wings spread set under a sword.

Colonel/Captain/Group Colonel
The highest of the field officer ranks, colonels command infantry, armor, or artillery regiments, and command the March Militia's BattleMech regiments. They also serve as executive officers for line BattleMech regiments, although typically this may include directing the regiment themselves at a tactical level. Their naval counterparts are known as captains, usually referred to as "naval captain" to distinguish them from land force and aerospace captains. Naval captains typically command WarShips and large armed DropShips, or as the commander of DropShip and JumpShip flotillas. Aerospace group colonels command groups of aerospace fighters. Their rank insignia is a gold hawk with wings spread set under a sword, an insignia that is sometimes referred to as having a "gold bird" as opposed to a "silver bird".


General Officers

Brigadier/Commodore/Air Commodore
After over two decades of service, officers who remain in the service and prove their command capability rise to the general officer ranks. The first is brigadier for ground troops and commodore or air commodore for naval and aerospace forces. Brigadiers command the brigades of the AFRF and are considered the COs of the line BattleMech regiments, as well as XOs for full RCTs or combat divisions. Commodores are executive officers for naval squadrons of the AFRF. Air commodores oversee the aerospace regiments assigned to combat divisions as well as planetary aerospace defense regiments. Their rank insignia is a single gold star set on a silver square.

Major General/Rear Admiral/Air Vice-Marshal
Major Generals are commanders of RCTs or combat divisions and heads of planetary defense headquarters across the Royal Federation. Rear admirals are executive officers of the battle fleets while air vice-marshals are typically in the AFRF staff echelons, with some commanding the aerospace divisions responsible for protecting major worlds like Arcadia, Tharkad, and Atreus. Officers of this rank are also found in senior management positions in the AFRF's upper echelons. Their rank insignia is two gold stars set side-by-side on a silver square.

Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral/Air Marshal
These officers are COs of march defense commands and AFRF Operational Forces. They are often the immediate responsible authorities for major military operations, including planetary-scale campaigns, while Vice Admirals are commanders of the battle fleets. They also serve as commanders for the smaller corps of combat commands such as the Striker Corps. Air Marshals oversee March Aerospace Commands. Whichever service they came up through, they are expected to be capable of blending all of the services together for successful operations. Once an officer attains this rank, they are automatically granted knighthoods. Their rank insignia is three gold stars arranged into a pyramid on a silver square.

General/Admiral/Air Marshal-General
Formerly the highest rank typically found in the Royal Federation and the Free March before it, the expansion of the Royal Federation in size, and the experiences of the War of Donegalian Succession and the Terran War, led to the expansion of the general officer ranks and a re-organization of responsibilities. Officers of this rank are COs of Theater Commands and the larger organized corps of combat commands. In time of war they can also be employed as commanders of Operational Groups, collections of OpForces employed over multiple star systems. They may also serve as chiefs of staff to the department heads of the AFRF. Their rank insignia are four stars arranged at the cardinal points of a silver square.

Field Marshal/Grand Admiral/Senior Air Marshal
In practice these are the highest ranks employed by the AFRF. They are the commanders of the AFRF's Departments. In war they would be appointed as Operational Front commanders overseeing operational fronts spanning dozens of star systems. These officers typically wield the ultimate responsibility for the AFRF. Their rank insignia is a silver square with five stars, four in the corners and one in the middle.

Marshal of the Army/Chief of Naval Operations/Chief Air Marshal of the Aerospace Force
These are not ranks so much as positions. Officers of appropriate background among the field marshals, grand admirals, and senior air marshals of the AFRF serve as the senior commanders of the three main combat branches of the AFRF, overseeing the ground, naval, and aerospace fighter forces respectively. The Chief Air Marshal not only oversees ground-based aerospace commands, but advises the Chief of Naval Operations on the Naval Aerospace Arm's operational requirements. Collectively they sit as the lead members of the AFRF's Command Staff. There is no special insignia for these positions.

Chief of Staff of the AFRF
The Chief of Staff oversees the high staff operations of the Royal Federation military, chairing the Department and Service heads of the AFRF when they officially meet as the Command Staff. They can be from any of the component services and serve at the pleasure of the High King, to whom they act as senior military advisor. All Chiefs of Staff of the AFRF are considered members of the Privy Council of the Royal Federation even after retirement. Upon retirement from active service it is custom for the High King to grant them a title of nobility, even if they are already in possession of one.

High King/High Queen
By the law and custom of the Royal Federation, the ruler is the Commanding Officer of the AFRF. Whatever their military status before their accession to the throne, they are authorized to wear the uniform of an AFRF officer at all occasions. Their rank insignia is a crowned golden hawk with spread wings on a silver square, the wings and tail-feathers of the hawk beyond the perimeter of the square.