Battletech second succession war .pdf download

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Most newer books are in the original electronic format. He could have anything from old Succession War 'Mechs up through the latest models to walk off the assembly line. My Hellbringer is more than a match for any vintage 'Mech, but I do not know about the others.

Have you seen the readout Never mind that tradition, from all the way back into the Succession Wars, forbade the use of such civilian vehicles for wartime matters. It was one thing to use a civilian There's war stories. Skip to content. The BattleMech-King of the Battlefield-was born. BattleMechs reached their pinnacle during the golden age of the Star League. The fall of the Star League and the Succession Wars that raged for centuries afterward took their toll and by the Fourth Succession War, the technology employed on the battlefields was a mere shadow of what it once was.

If that demands action on our part, so be it. It cannot compromise the ultimate mission. We need a five-hundredyear plan. Or more! And an autocratic regime never survives the death of the autocrat. Our ideas will die with us, Jerome. They might die with you. And you, Conrad. What his mentor said was true enough. He had been supplying advice for years to help him deal with the internal politics. But a key aspect of all of it was the cult of personality that had sprung up around Blake.

He was brilliant, certainly, but he was now often regarded as someone who could do no wrong, whose judgment was impeccable. Even if I do everything right, I could die a year from now, and all our sacrifices will be for nothing.

So, I came up with a plan. She certainly handed me enough ammo. There is only one thing that outlasts an autocrat. A religion. We agree that we have a higher calling. But any such mission does not outlast an individual. The calling has to become bigger than any man or woman. Our people are starting to believe in that. How long…? More often than not, our recruits feel a genuine calling. Only at the higher levels does the mongering and sycophancy kick in.

But soon, you can turn it in to a full religion. I refuse! Always in the service of others, for the greater good. I was a little genius, and my parents made sure I went to school. There was a longing in his words, and a deep sense of loss. Before him was a man who was looking back at his life in these last few moments, and he did not like all that he saw. It was honest, but it was brutal. Conrad opened his mouth to say something conciliatory, but Blake stopped him with a gesture and a sigh.

Or yours. Conrad was quiet for a long time, then he nodded. Jerome smiled, and opened the drawer to his bedstand. He pulled out two noteputers. Make a farce out of my best friend, and gain power. But it might work. You might have to make an example of him.

The side of slow corruption and death. I might have stayed outside. Does Dupreas know? I know you can rely on her. My will specifies cremation, the ashes to be scattered over the Court. You need the symbol.

And it needs to be tangible. Or a few other things. But before we get to that, I want to repeat my prior warning. Religions have proven themselves a wonderful blessing to mankind, and a terrible curse. It creaked under his weight. Jerome had fallen asleep shortly after their conversation moved away from ancient secrets and manufactured false religion.

But now, Jerome had stopped breathing. His friend was dead. Conrad leaned forward, and sighed deeply. He felt his insides contract achingly with every breath. The pain of his loss was deep and sudden somehow. He felt truly alone for the first time.

He cried. It was too soon. They had talked in a way that they never had before, and it was almost as if they had grown closer in the last brief few hours than they had been in the preceding forty-three years. The pain receded slightly as he cried. He stopped, and cursed extensively at the ceiling. Then the enormity of what could happen next overcame him, and he felt panic settle in. It was impossible. It was insane. It would never work. It was too much for him.

For anyone. He looked at the noteputers next to his dead friend. The other belonged to Blake, a man he never knew. He got up, and checked a mirror to see if the signs of his tears were still visible on his face. He suddenly looked so much older. His vanity had long since become a casualty of time, but the face that looked back at him was far more tired than the one he saw this morning.

The moment was so fragile. Like a bird in his hands. He could change everything for everyone right now with the smallest of physical efforts. Or he could, with an almost equally tiny amount of force, do nothing. And no one would even know. He walked back to the noteputers and picked one up, storing it in his coat. Inside the drawer was the sealed order Jerome had mentioned, which named him his sole successor.

It might delay Schwepps long enough, especially if he bullied the First Circuit outside into confirming its authenticity immediately. He sighed, and picked up the other noteputer. The distance between him and the door would be his last few free moments. He looked down at his friend. No more. He walked through the door. Conrad smiled grimly. Forgiveness was a creative force. But so was anger. He found comfort as his mind set itself on familiar problem-solving patterns.

He loved effecting change. Every problem could be solved by just parsing it into smaller problems, which could be defeated in turn. Outside, the First Circuit would meet someone new and never seen before. They would meet Toyama, the tyrant. He knew each of them, and they would prove unable to resist him. The outcome known, it was now but a matter of implementation. You and me both. Or BattleMechs.

I can still walk away… and see what… happens. He hated this weakness. He hated this uncertainty. He hated still feeling doubt after all these years. The price he had paid this last decade, over and over, the cost to him personally. The countless lives he had affected for the worse. The suffering caused by his hands. If he wavered now, all of that would become meaningless, an unpleasant footnote in history. But did that really justify more crimes?

Humanity had been at war now for almost his entire life. He barely remembered what it felt like to be at peace. When you looked at your opponent, and you both knew what you were about to do. There had been no real rapprochement between the Houses, no significant efforts to mend fences and re-establish a constructive relationship. There was just the sharpening of knives. Worlds without military use, but with dire needs, had been left to die. They could have been saved, but the price was building fewer BattleMechs, and everyone was focused only on the enemy.

The distance between planets had proven sufficient to turn former cousins into faceless aliens, unworthy of life in some way. They had learned nothing. There had been no progress, no awakening, and no realization of what mankind was now blindly doing to itself. Conrad stood up and turned towards Blake. When a trillion decided to do nothing, at least I decided to act! With a calmer voice, he continued.

Of us taking responsibility for all that we are capable of doing. If I can succeed in that, well, then praise be unto Blake. And let those who say it with actual sincerity be good people. He powered on his communicator, and opened a channel. Pass the package along to Jeanette. Conrad had been here many times over the past few years, but always while presiding over some official function or religious holiday.

The Shrine was filled to the brim then, and the rituals helped him stay detached from the absurd and the grotesque. At the center of the domed structure was Blake, the relic.

Embalmed and preserved with a hideous process, the remnant of his friend looked slightly artificial, surreal, as if it was manufactured from plastics and fabrics. Conrad touched the glass nearest to the face and sobbed, once. It came forth almost like an involuntary cough, and he felt his sadness clench down painfully on his throat. Many described seeing the Blake relic as an uplifting, comforting experience. They would say it filled them with hope.

But the preservation of his friend only brought back the memories of Jerome just after he stopped breathing. The memories of the sudden emptiness that had filled him, the enormity of which surprised him then, as it did now. Every time he really remembered that moment, he would struggle to not be absorbed by the extent to which he missed his friend and mentor.

Why does it still feel this way after all this time? It was like the accusations that he and Blake were at odds, all those years ago. Tabloids and whispering enemies pounced on it, insinuating hate and dysfunction where there was none.

It had hurt though. But it was nothing like the pain of the more recent cowardly whispers that claimed he had murdered Jerome. Those cut deep every single time. He sat down with his back to the reliquary, next to the spot that had already been visibly polished by the knees of too many. The pumps that moved the fluids through the corpse whispered quietly. A voice that now commanded billions. Yet he felt only loneliness. He grunted and pushed through his emotions that had delayed him this long.

The moment is here. I thought…I thought the moment was at your cabin, but…If I do nothing now, I think this fire will burn down to a smolder. Yet if I push…I think it might burn for another century. So far, my actions have been minor, little more than propaganda. But I fear I fear that we will be cursed for our plan. The original document was a draft compiled by Paladin Constance McGuire nearly a century ago, but upon examination, I believe it would serve as a solid primer for our sibkos regarding the history of the Inner Sphere during our Exile.

I have taken the liberty of reviewing the original Republic draft and now submit the complete document for your approval. Some say war is not a series of discrete events, but rather a continuum, a never-ending state with only occasional aberrations of peace to mar its form. The Succession Wars, a nearconstant conflict spanning almost a quarter of a millennium, certainly fit that concept. The First Succession War, which ended in , was the most brutal conflict in human history, while the Third was one of the longest by a significant margin.

The Second Succession War is often forgotten, dismissed as less brutal than the conflict that preceded it and shorter than the one that followed. Such assumptions neglect the socio-political, economic and military events of the conflict. These conflicts hampered the war efforts of the respective Houses, exacerbating already perilous situations. That the First Succession War was the most devastating military conflict in history is unquestioned, but such broad statements neglect much of the collateral damage that befell the Inner Sphere as a consequence of the fighting.

Far more worlds died or were abandoned in the Second Succession War —Loremaster Stephan Roshak than the First, often a result of cascade-failures begun in earlier conflicts, exacerbated by new disasters and the collapse of the interstellar economy.

Militarily, the Second Succession War began in a similar manner to the First: raiding gave way to large-scale operations. But by its end, the Successor States had lost the ability to bring war on broad fronts with dozens of regiments. Instead, raiding and small-scale operations became the norm, as the combatants lacked the manpower, material, and transport capacity to do anything more.

That the devastation and horror that ensued did not convince people to give up on war entirely only highlights the conceit that man is his own worst enemy. As with those previous volumes, The Second Succession War is part sourcebook and part rulebook, allowing players to recreate key events of the war. Intentions, the introductory story, reveals how a secret conversation shaped the history of the Inner Sphere.

The Second Succession War details the major events of the thirty-five-year conflict, covering key engagements on all fronts as well as the internal political machinations of each Great House. A Legacy of Destruction covers the aftermath of the Second Succession War and the attempts to broker peace while preparing for the next war. Personalities describes the histories and motivations of the House Lords and other notables of the conflict.

The Rules Annex includes a number of items designed to aid play during the Second Succession War, including rules for generating forces representative of the era, as well as systems reflecting the impact of social and economic collapse. I believe it is peace for our time. For some it was a slow decline, the population desperately clinging on to survival. For others, the end was sudden and lethal.

Realizing the precariousness of their situation—and with most WarShips and strategic weapons exhausted and the means of replenishing them lost—the Successor States brought the era of mass devastation to a close.

After another short pause, the Third Succession War would be markedly different in character, focusing on small-scale actions and the preservation of resources, and would span a stunning years. Ironically, the uptick in manufacturing capacity and technological recovery at the end of that conflict and in the decades after the discovery of the Helm Memory Core allowed humanity to build new arsenals that would lead to the resumption of devastating warfare during the Blakist Jihad.

It grew out of long-simmering tensions and feuds among the human polity, held in check by the Star League for centuries until given vent with great ferocity in the wake of the Amaris Coup. Would such devastation have occurred had there never been a Star League and the Great Houses been left to their own bickering?

By the third decade of the twenty-ninth century, the initial fury of what would become the First Succession War was largely spent and the original pretexts for the conflict long abandoned. Humanity had not given up on its fratricidal conflicts, however—a few sought lasting peace, but others sought to undermine that process. In the end, the first half of the s amounted to nothing more than a brief pause in the conflict; an opportunity for the belligerents to catch their breath, rest and re-arm, and plan for a return to warfare.

Like the World Wars of old Terra, the resumption of open conflict in the form of the Second Succession War was largely inevitable.

The First War had not settled matters, and it could be argued that the Second War was merely a continuation of the First, using the same equipment and tactics: terror and mass destruction. Politically, however, there were significant differences between the two conflicts. Most importantly, the five combatants of the First Succession War were joined covertly in the Second Succession War by a sixth faction in the form of ComStar.

The Order had been active in the earlier conflict, but the death of Jerome Blake and the rise of Conrad Toyama—and later Raymond Karpov—to the Primacy heralded a more interventionist approach. ComStar shepherded the Successor States back toward war and embarked on direct action in some of the resulting conflicts.

While the First Succession War had been hugely destructive, it was the Second that pushed humanity to the brink.

Many of the proto-states that emerged were built along nationalistic, ideological, or religious lines. When those states merged and became the Great Houses, and later the Successor States, those internal divisions remained. The Lyran Commonwealth is one example. The constituent parts of the Commonwealth emerged from different cultural heritages—the Scots and Italians of the Federation of Skye, the Irish of Donegal and the Pakistani-Americans of Tamar. It sought to bring together six nation states, each with its own internal conflicts, into a single pan-human society.

The newly-minted First Lord seized the resulting Reunification War as an opportunity to help unify the member states while bringing the recalcitrant Periphery into the fold. The Star League endured for the next years, during which the promise of a pan-human society manifested in increased living standards—humans could expect to live to years of age, with medical treatments available for a wide variety of ailments and injuries.

It is hardly surprising that many look back on the Star League years as a golden era. The reality was more complex. Relations between and within the member states were fractious and a series of political and military incidents ensued—tribalism in action. The most serious conflicts became brush-fire wars, often prompting the intervention of the Star League Defense Force. The most serious of these incidents began in the s, when the Periphery nations forcibly incorporated into the League rose in open rebellion.

Attempts by the SLDF to restore order turned into bloody encounters and spread the League forces thin, prompting the young First Lord Richard Cameron to call on his friend and mentor, Stefan Amaris of the Rim Worlds Republic, for assistance in securing the core worlds of the Terran Hegemony. Players in this tournament participate as a pilot, gaining Fame and Wealth based on showmanship, battlefield savvy, and experience while participating in combat, sponsorship, and stable membership.

Genetically engineered and bred for centuries for honor and glory, Clan warriors lust for a Bloodname for years and many never make the cut. Can you win the Trial of Bloodright? Included in the Box Set is a handy Table Card on card stock, that has many of the frequently used tables of the Board Game.

You can use this PDF to print some of your own. It probably helps if you can also print it on cardstock, or thicker paper. Now, three of the maps promised in IO are now available for free download below. Capturing the borders and political affiliations of the Inner Sphere at the end of the Third Succession War, this map presents the perfect springboard for playing out the Fourth Succession War or making your bid to put your chosen House on top! With the planets and borders on the eve of the First Succession War, this map puts you in the position to correct the mistakes of the past and claim your place as the First Lord of the Star League for one of the Houses.

Representing the Inner Sphere on the eve of the Second Succession War, this map is the best way to start your path to becoming the First Lord as war once more consumes the Inner Sphere. The Dark Age period represents a jump forward in time of some five decades from the end of the Word of Blake Jihad in The following documents can be used to catch up on the events, personalities and changes of the new setting.