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Kraken
Federated Suns
Marshal
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2755
Location: United States
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 Posted: 04-Feb-2013 22:00 Post subject: My Battletech campaign |
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Since this became a wee bit of an issue down in Design Submissions, here's the continuity I'm keeping for my Battletech verse.
I'd appreciate any feedback.
Thanks.
**
Back when Caph was first settled, an isolated region known as New Nauvoo was colonized. Initially, it was a religious colony, with 95% of the settlers being devout members of one faith or another. However, scratching the surface was a deep talent pool: many of the settlers were either current / former military, had advanced degrees, and/or were mechanically gifted. The end result was that what was one of the Inner Sphere's best brain trusts was dismissed by outsiders as a random series of religious communes too far out and surrounded by too many mountains to be worthwhile.
The "secret" was nearly spilled when a native of the region rapidly moved through the ranks of the SLDF, becoming one of the youngest majors in SLDF history and attracting the attention of SLDF high command. Realizing just what the region offered, the decision was made to turn the region into what was essentially a giant Castle Brian. The idea was that if something ever happened to Terra, the SLDF could use New Nauvoo as a cache and staging area to retake it. However, the Amaris Coup resulted in most of the SLDF officials who actually knew about the existence of the New Nauvoo Castle Brian either being killed, being captured, or going missing. The end result was that the Castle Brian sat untouched.
Rather than let it go to waste, the New Nauvoo authorities set to work. They soon began to dismantle the mechs, aerospace fighters, and vehicles that were stationed there in order to reverse engineer them. Once plans and schematics were done, the authorities set about creating factories to produce more of these war machines, particularly updated and improved versions. The SLDF had already gone to length to hide extensive fortifications in plain sight, in the process showing the locals how it could be done; now it was time for them to do it themselves. While the rest of the planet was turned into a wasteland by constant invasions, remote little New Nauvoo was too far away to be bothered with... and busy planning for the return of the Terran Hegemony.
While the region never had the numbers to be a major military force, they did begin sending trained operatives out into the larger Inner Sphere to lay the groundwork for bigger and better things. Some were tasked with recovering "lost" knowledge. Others were tasked with making contracts and treaties. Still others were tasked with neutralizing threats to the fledgling nation. By the time Caph was swallowed up in the Chaos March, the Armed Forces of New Nauvoo was a small but potent military force and the intelligence services had spies and agents spread far and wide.
Ca. 3062, bandit activity on Caph picked up exponentially. Lyndon's Battalion and a number of mercenary units that they had subcontracted attempted to keep a handle on things, but it soon became apparent that nothing short of the various garrisons and the AFNN coming together would stop it. Between the AFNN and a particular mercenary unit (a nod to a campaign I had going), enough damage was done to uncover the full plot: the Word of Blake had been hiring criminals, malcontents, and down-on-their-luck mercenaries in order to stage a crisis so that they could intervene as peacekeepers. When the Blakists rolled in, they were handed what was the most spectacular defeat in their history by a waiting AFNN-led coalition.
Realizing the extent of the new threat, the AFNN went overt and began making treaties with various planets and powers to form a rough defensive net against the Word of Blake. This net worked in the sense that when the Jihad was launched, the participating groups served to dog the Blakist forces. Some planets - like Caph - remained free, while others only fell after considerable resistance. The end result was that the Word of Blake was confused and disorganized, enabling a daring coalition strike that, against all odds, succeeded in pushing them off of Terra.
This forced a rough lull in the action which lasted about two years. Both sides made skirmishes, and a few planets were retaken from Blakist control, but otherwise the WoB and the New Terran Hegemony were both at their limits in terms of manpower and machinery. The Blakists responded by expanding a factory on Sirius to produce low-tech mechs and vehicles in the hopes of rapidly rebuilding their crumbling forces and building a new factory on Procyon to handle high-tech designs salvaged from the Liberation of Terra. The NTH responded by designing more efficient, more lethal combat machines that could serve as force multipliers.
The WoBblies planned to once more put together a massive force that could crush all in its wake, but the NTH emphasis on force multipliers - in particular, LAMs - enabled them to start their offensive first. Dubbed "Operation: Sucker Punch", the NTH tapped the existing AFNN spy network to locate planets whose garrisons were unstable. The plan called for a first wave of LAMs and aerospace fighters to jump into a system and attempt to claim space superiority so as to allow designated targets of opportunity on the planet to be hit; the idea was that losing battles could be quickly abandoned with minimal cost, while winning battles could be quickly supported by actual ground forces. The liberation of Quentin served as the trial by fire, with the liberation of Styx allowing the tactic to be refined.
As potent as the new Blakist legions were, the best they could do was slow the inevitable, especially after the Ghost Bears and the Nova Cats succeeded in ridding their realms of Blakist forces. Making matters worse was the fact that the Hell's Horses and Fire Mandrills won the right to "liberate" portions of the Wolf and Falcon invasion corridors for themselves; the Horses had only been bloodied by recent events, and the Mandrills were almost completely fresh.
Between the Clans, the New Terran Hegemony, the Solaris Protectorate, and the numerous individual uprisings, the Word of Blake found itself in a state reminiscent of the Third Reich of so long ago.
In time, the Word of Blake was forced back to the Periphery, a small portion of the Cappellan Confederation, and the central 75% of the Free Worlds League. With the NTH, the Solaris Protectorate, and the revitalized Clan invasion corridors, a rough cold war set in as the various factions sought to rebuild and weigh their next steps.
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"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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Kraken
Federated Suns
Marshal
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2755
Location: United States
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| Posted: 13-Feb-2013 08:55 Post subject: My Battletech campaign |
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Uploaded a map on Deviant Art.
Bear in mind that you'll need Ad-Block Plus or another such ad blocker, as every so often the site's ad hosts get compromised.
_________________
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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ICER
Clan Hell's Horses
Galaxy Commander
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1663
Location: United States
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| Posted: 13-Feb-2013 17:50 Post subject: My Battletech campaign |
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Very Kewl
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Kraken
Federated Suns
Marshal
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2755
Location: United States
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| Posted: 13-Feb-2013 18:03 Post subject: My Battletech campaign |
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Thanks.
_________________
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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