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BattleTech Lore & History - First Succession War: Political Overview (MechWarrior Lore)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
- #battletech #lore #mechwarrior BattleTech Lore & History is a series by Sven van der Plank that covers the history of the #innersphere and Periphery within the #battletech universe. Presented as a #documentary from the year 3025, the videos cover in detail major events such as the Age of War, founding of the #starleague, #reunificationwar, the Golden Age, #starleague Civil War and the four #successionwar.
Support the Channel: / svenvanderplank
Galaxy Map created from the Sarna Unified Cartography Kit (SUCKit) provided by Volt, colour added by Sven van der Plank.
Blank map available from Sarna: www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleTech...
Maps used in videos available at: drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Sourcebooks Referenced:
House Davion: Federated Suns (1623)
House Kurita: Draconis Combine (1620)
House Liao: Capellan Confederation (1624)
House Marik: Free Worlds League (1622)
House Steiner: Lyran Commonwealth (1621)
The Periphery (1629)
The Star League (1630)
ComStar (1655)
Handbook: House Davion (35024)
Handbook: House Kurita (35205)
Handbook: House Liao (35204)
Handbook: House Marik (35019)
Handbook: House Steiner (35001)
Handbook: Major Periphery (35203)
Era Report: 2750 (35222)
Historical: Reunification War (35231)
Historical: Liberation of Terra Vol.I (35232)
Historical: Liberation of Terra Vol.II (35233)
Historical: Operation Klondike (35230)
Historical: First Succession War (35235)
Historical: Second Succession War (35236)
Field Manual: SLDF (35251)
Field Report 2765: AFFS (35FR010)
Field Report 2765: CCAF (35FR008)
Field Report 2765: DCMS (35FR009)
Field Report 2765: FWLM (35FR011)
Field Report 2765: LCAF (35FR012)
Field Report 2765: Periphery (35FR013)
Jihad Hot Spots: Terra (35205)
Further references from Sarna.net - Thank you to the Sarna.net discord for additional support: / discord
BattleTech belongs to #catalystgamelabs and Topps.
Art from HBS Battletech and MechWarrior 5 belong to Harebrained Schemes and Piranha Games respectively.
BattleTech (2016) soundtrack by Jon Everist: joneverist.bandcamp.com/
MechWarrior 5 soundtrack by Sean Kolton: www.seankolton.com/samples
MechCommander soundtrack by Duane Decker: www.duanedecker.com/
Steiner font by Pixel Sagas: www.fontspace.com/steiner-fon...
Additional unit and faction insignias by:
Awesome Autocrat: www.deviantart.com/alchetbeac...
Flieger: bg.battletech.com/forums/inde...
Punakettu: www.deviantart.com/punakettu
Stacalkas: www.deviantart.com/stacalkas
Viereth: www.deviantart.com/viereth
0:00 Intro
1:14 Draconis Combine (Kurita)
2:30 Capellan Confederation (Liao)
3:43 Lyran Commonwealth (Steiner)
5:15 Free Worlds League (Marik)
7:14 Federated Suns (Davion)
9:04 Terran Hegemony
10:15 Factory Worlds
14:46 Intelligence Agencies
16:31 Taurian Concordat (Calderon)
17:36 Magistracy of Canopus (Centrella)
18:16 Outworlds Alliance (Avellar)
18:57 Minor Periphery Powers
21:16 Outro
This video got copyright claimed because of the music I used in the opening. I can't control ad placement so hopefully there are not too many.
Just so nobody is under any delusions, this chapter is mostly a recap of some fairly basic information. Wanted to have it all in one place that folks can refer back to as I won't explain it later on. Tomorrow's episode will cover the militaries of the Inner Sphere, then the fighting begins in earnest next Saturday.
Don't worry Sven we are nerds, if you make a 10 hour long video about logistics and we will watch it
I watch Tex Talks BattleTech to be entertained. I watch you gain a better understanding. Thank you for making content like this.
@@HD-mp6yy in fact I absolutely would and then proceed to pontificate on the comment section (possibly alone) on how noobs talk tactics whilst chads talk logistic
I have Premium , what ads ?
Coool
It's always wild seeing how much larger the CC or Outworlds Alliance was before the Succession Wars.
Yeah, they're quite a lot larger back then, though their reasons for shrinking are completely different.
Glad to see the series continuing
I'm glad to finally get it out there. Not having internet able to upload large files meant it was difficult to motivate myself to work on this, but now those issues are resolved, we're starting to build some momentum again.
I’m glad your covering this, let’s us know how big this boogaloo is going to get. Also why the phase, ‘and then everything exploded,’ is such a relevant point.
I figured with the start of a new era (the Succession Wars) it would be good to do a "back-to-school" episode for anyone who might want to jump in at this point. With this being the largest and most destructive war, it felt especially important to make sure people understood where things stood at the beginning before it all goes to hell.
A brilliant narration of the set up for the beginning of the First Succession War, Sven. Thank you for putting the long hours of putting this together for everyone!
You're welcome, it's been a real joy to see how folks respond to these.
That opening crawl gives such a sense of dread. The dead that have yet to be added. This war is why forgiveness is impossible in the Inner Sphere.
You'll see that opening slowly evolve over the course of this series as the numbers of dead keep rising.
Great Houses: Starts clubbing each other back to the stone age over an empty, blood soaked chair.
Periphery States: "Yeah, that's what y'all deserve!"
You and your videos are singlehandedly responsible for me getting interested in Battletech lore. I was just a casual gamer, playing some of the MechWarrior and Mech Commander PC games, for the longest time. I look forward to more!
Thank you. I was introduced to the series myself some 6-7 years ago through Critical Rocket's Lorewarrior series (after playing a couple of the video games as a kid) so it's always nice to hear that things have come full circle and new folks are having the same experience through my own vids.
This is what I love about your content dude, you boil down VOLUMES of stats, numbers, and doctrines into a fairly concise and well explained package so even us grunts can understand it
Hey no problem, glad you're finding it interesting.
Tex goes deep. CRocket goes deep. Red goes deep with the narrator voice.
Our man Sven? He's down there tapping geothermal. If he goes deeper, it'll be in the mantle.
Ha, are you talking about my voice or the depth of information? I always felt my voice was much too high to be a decent narrator (should have taken up smoking, lol).
@@SvenVanDerPlank Depth of info, my most excellent dude! Your voice is good: clear, understandable, and engaging.
@@derekburge5294 Hell, I love his no-nonsense Scottish burr
Thank you for making a political overview about this important conflict in sci-fi history!
One other thing about Lyran families in power: Not being the original ruling dynasty isn't limited to the Steiners. None of the member states are ruled by their founding dynasty, with both the Kelswa and Lestrade families being installed by Robert Steiner after the Steiner Civil War.
This makes me realise that I never did a video on the Lyran Civil War during my Dark Age series. I was going through the timeline much quicker back then, could probably do to make a few extras.
@@SvenVanDerPlankMaybe you could revisit it as a contrast to the Triumvirate Regency whenever you get to the second war? They're probably the two times where the Steiner dynasty is in the most danger.
There are actually a couple other topics I should have gone over in the Age of War series, such as the November Conspiracy, the life of Siriwan McAllister and the CCAF killing the Capellan Chancellor (why there are only Colonels). If I can think of an interesting topic for the Hegemony and Free Worlds League I might do a mini-series on the "Untold Stories."
House Marik-Liao, the dynasty that almost was... twice! Centuries before Sun-Tzu Liao got engaged to Isis Marik, Chancellor Jasmine Liao and Captain-General Simone Marik tried to broker a marriage between their relatives. It failed so spectacularly that it cost Simone Marik her position.
You're a relatively new player's saving grace when it comes to lore.
Beautiful Barbara Liao always makes me look up from painting minis.
A lot of this I wasn’t familiar with, and anyways, you are always great to listen to. Can’t wait for the next part!
Man, the continuing casualty graph is really making it hit hard how bad this War became.
That opening scroll is the motif of this whole series. As things get worse and worse, more and more columns get added to the opening, as you will soon see.
Jarnfork guys are probably making pop-corn for the upcoming nuclear firework shows, until the Clans came into the picture. My guess is that no one hears from them anymore is because they got by the Clans, since clanners came from the north
I'm not sure, but I think they might have been too far spinward for the clans to pass them during their invasion. I know ComStar later re-establishes contact but not sure what, if anything, happens beyond that.
You know, it would have been really interesting if one of the great houses had actually backed down, shored up it's borders and went. "Nah we're good." Attempting to sit out the succession wars would add a lot of interesting changes to the galactic stage, especially once warship production ceases entirely for the other houses.
Though I guess thats basically what happened with the clans/comstar?
Still think it would be a neat alternative universe idea.
Nobody goes to quite the extreme you're suggesting but both the Lyrans and Capellans do attempt a policy of staying out of the war at one point or another. I'll cover those in detail in later chapters.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Then I look forward to it!
Your content is so good dude, thank you for the work you are doing for this community.
Succint and complete; the best snapshot I've seen of the state of the 'Sphere on the eve of war. Great work both representing each faction and distilling it down to a consumable size!
You say I distilled it down but it's precisely because I failed at keeping it short that I had to split it into two chapters this weekend 😂 Still, I'm happy with the result.
Thank you for continuing this great lore series!
oh im so excited for this breakdown
I don't think there is anything groundbreaking in this video to get excited over. It's fairly standard stuff, but I just wanted to set the stage for anyone who is jumping in at this point.
Interesting to see Coromodir as part of the western province of the Concordat. Puts an interesting light on the HBS game, as well as one of the fanfics I was following some time ago; probably need to re-read it with that in mind. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
the whole rimward region there was an influence battleground between centerella and calderon, even after creation of aurgian coalition, and if i am not wrong later on that part of space created its very own periphery power-Fronc Reaches(correct me if i am wrong plz) which had the famous colonial marshals
@@Aladine11 The Fronc Reaches were a joint Canopian-Capellan-Taurian venture called the New Colony Region that eventually went its own way... minus the industrial world of Detroit, the development of which was the whole point of the region. The Canopians kept that one.
Not gonna lie; I'm neutral about the Free Worlds League. But every time I see Kenyon Marik's face? For some inexplicable reason I want to slap it. Hard.
How could you want to slap such an honest and humble face?
It's that smug look on his face. It invites one to hit him.
yay-. best of timing,´Sat-Sun is main sleep recovery recovery for me. thanks for this treat
You're welcome. Hope you enjoy the videos.
This series is amazing... What wonderful work!
Great Video. Thanks. I think I'll include this in my getting-people-into-battletech-list after D.C. Bruins' Mechwarrior Origins and Tex' Mackie Video.
Boeing being stick-in-the-muds, even in the future, really just FITS.
Guess they took the mistakes of the 737 MAX to heart...
Best lore videos on TH-cam. Thank you! Subbed.
Thank you, I'm flattered you think so.
Another great video!
Cheers!
Another great and in depth video. Great work 👍
Great video!
Excellent Summary!
The music was VERY good for this episode. My brother has,a ton equipment and could make you all sorts of music. For free
Great series!
clean and informative. also well narrated. 👌
I do wonder if we'll ever get a Battletech series on the big screen or even on TV? I would like to think it'll be more likely if Gundam comes out with a successful live action movie. Battletech would likely appeal to wider audience who would otherwise only watch Gundam and/or Dune. Heck even series' like the Expanse and For all Mankind show how successful Battletech could be
Awesome again , actually slept in this time though
Great job
Loved that intro! Was it created or from a show?
As someone new to the BT game, watching all your lore helps me understand the intricacies of how the houses allied/warred with each other during the different eras.
Intro from the premiere? That's one of the TH-cam countdowns.
Glad you are finding the videos useful.
the luetin of bt
Thank you. That's a very flattering comparison.
Love your work mate.
This is fantastic!
Thanks for making this! We are actually playing a 1st Succession War campaign in my local group so this is super helpful!
You're welcome. A bit of a miserable point in the timeline to set a game. High probability of it ending with a nuke (possibly one of your own) being dropped on your head. Let me know how it goes.
@@SvenVanDerPlank will do!
I see Sven, i hit like before the vid even starts. Well done good sir, I've said it before and i'm sure i'll say it again, yours are some of the rare vids i actually pause everything else to just sit and focus on 👍
Well thank you, I'm glad you enjoy them so much. This one was a little basic but it won't be long now until Armageddon arrives.
It may not be the most glamorous aspect of the war, but it's nonetheless a very important part
Thank you for the clear and concise context
great video
Very cool.
The Department of Military Intelligence not sharing information with others makes missing the naval lasers (which are very obviously there in the recon probe footage) in MW3 make more sense.
Think you for continuing this series, the amount of work you have put into these documentaries is evident and superior.
where do you get your IS maps? those are truly excellent.
I get the blank star map from the Sarna Unified Cartography Kit, courtesy of a user named Volt. I then add the colour and extras (capitals, industry, shipyards, regiments) myself as an overlay on top of that. You can find them linked in the description if you want to use them yourself.
7:18 I had to go back and listen again. I misheard it as "Fresh" Prince John Davion.😅
Goddamn, now that's a gag I'm definitely gonna sneak in to an upcoming video.
It's unfortunate what happens to John Davion and his son, but out of the five lords, he was the best choice IMO. Never mind the regency, he looked at the position as a duty as opposed to the others, save perhaps Steiner.
It's easy to do ones duty when it gives you so much power and wealth 😉
@@SvenVanDerPlank Of course to a Steiner, to get wealth and power IS one's duty :P
The death of both him and his son in their own command bunker never made sense, especially with no hint of who or what killed them. It feels like the writer(s) just decided he was still too nice for his own good despite the shady stuff he did, and so they wanted him out so they could have a jerk (Paul) Davion on the throne instead. Is his son even named or known outside of the fact that he died in there too? They could've just made Paul his son instead and that would've worked just fine...then again, maybe that's one of those things already set in writing that they had to work around.
Fantastic
Don't forget, House Cameron-Jones is a cadet Branch of the actual Camerons, just from before the Star League formed. It's pretty cool.
It is true, but good luck trying to use that as an argument to claim ownership over any Cameron holdings. Suspect Marik would bring a swift end to any Regular upstarts.
Shameless plug: If you want to learn more about ComStar and its history in this time... I made a little series about it.
Saved your playlist to check later
I had to look up "Stratocracy". I hadn't heard that one before. :)
I hadn't heard of the term before myself, so perhaps I should have explained it, but it best describes the way in which the DC operates, with military Warlords having complete authority to overrule civilian government.
Nah, it's fine, and it certainly describes the Combine. Maybe you should start a word-a-day/planet series, ha-ha! @@SvenVanDerPlank
And that man-stack of casualties just keeps going... :'(
The amount of industry each of the realms, even the capellans and freeworlds, had is rather shocking
I wish I had some better numbers to display in the video but I only have game values from ISW in the First Succession War sourcebook. I understand them not wanting to give concrete numbers because it so quickly starts to unravel the shaky economics of BT, but at the same time I can't just say "the Capellan Confederation has an industrial strength of 36" as if that means anything at all in-universe.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Trying to contextualize those numbers is one of the big challenges. But it DOES give you an idea of just how much strategic depth the Houses had at the time, which you did really well.
That's what generations of peacetime investment and galactic trade will do.
Time for some Battletech
Slick
Your awesome
Well done. You are also the first person I've seen to have a map with every nations provinces / regions marked and named.
Is it possible for us to get your map of 2787 with all those names on it in one place?
The blank maps are linked in the description. I don't have a version with a text overlay but I can maybe look into it.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Thank you. I asked because, in Battletech's nearly 40 years, we don't a have a singular map like that yet.
Great work as always.
...
Side note- Creators of BT draw most if not all of their stompy robots from Japan (in the early days) then write all the asian factions as the absolute worst places run by the worst people- all trouble in the history can be traced to either of these tow factions - what could the creators have meant by this? ^_^"
BT author Robert Charette has talked about this. There was definitely a lingering and unpleasant "yellow menace" in the background of some early characterisation. I think the way people joke about the factions, and the fact that all of the major players are inherently not good guys, hides the fact that the way the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation are characterised has evolved considerably from 1986.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Funny enough I never saw it as a 'yellow menace' per se but a deep aversion to the source of their own inspiration of the game. Fang of the Sun Dougram, Gundam and Macross - kind of self hating weeaboos before the term was popular.
It's informed a bit , for me, from the deep insistence by a lot of older BT fans that BT isn't 'anime' inspired and some weird need to identify with more traditional wargamer seriousness in what is inarguably a very silly premise steeped in serious lore.
Bascily i saw it as an inter-nerd superiority complex 'oh we're not that silly anime stuff like Mekton' (they weren't wrong per se)
I've also wondered if that had anything to do with the slow vanishing of hands and humanoid shape from BT over the years. It's not all gone, and wasn't all human shaped tanks with legs (Locust I'm looking at You)
Or maybe its just that BT dropped the ball, no pun intended, with anything handheld in the BT rules
Sorry for the aside, but no I never thought it was the yellow menace trope, I thought it was more of a 'we're not THAT kind of nerd' trope
Even if the IS leaders had 20-20 hindsight, this war was going to happen. They may have gone with a prohibition on Tech targets( like what happened during the 3rd war). However, the tech slide would still happen, compliments of COMSTAR.
I think that ComStar were able to hide their involvement because the others were targeting each other in that way as well. Had they been more reserved, the ComStar shenanigans would have been more obvious and led to an inevitable backlash. I do agree with you though that there was almost no way this war wasn't going to happen post-Star League.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I think ComStar would still get away with most of it, since they had the advantage of being able to read everyone else's mail. As for backlash, ask Hanse Davion what happens when you get hit with an HPG Blackout. It's going to be interesting when you do the lead up to the 2nd War, and everyone gets to see ComStars envolvement.
Yeah, fair enough. I think ComStar is less involved in the First Succession War than people assume. They're mostly in the background, doing only what they need to do to survive. It's only after Toyama takes over that things take a dramatic turn. I'm actually planning to gloss over 2819 events in this series and go back to it for the intro to the Second.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Sorry, didn't mean to imply that they where involved in the First. Now the 2nd through the Dark Age... And your totally right, once Toyama took over, it was a whole new ballgame.
@@gregdomenico1891 The backlash wouldn't necessarily have to be aggression against Comstar, just a refusal to spark any more wars or take part in any more massive ones, along with making efforts to preserve their tech.
The politics of the BT universe puts GOT to shame in my opinion lol
I don't know if I agree. There is such a huge world and opportunities for that kind of storytelling in BT, but I don't think that potential is tapped into as well as GRRM does. Would that even be possible without the complexities of it all grinding everything to a halt? I don't know.
I'm 100% sure that GRRM was inspired at least in part by BattleTech - complex, multi-level politics, lots of similar/identical faction insignias... I'm positive that Katherine Steiner-Davion was the inspiration for Cersei Lannister rather than anyone from actual history
A stragic map game based on this period would be nice, even a stellaris mod.
We need more combind arms battleteck
If I remember correctly, the original Succession Wars boardgame from 1987 allowed you to play in either 3025 or 2787.
@SvenVanDerPlank did not even know that was a thing. I only played the pc games.
I can picture the cold calculation of war of trying to maintain your navy if you had warships and nuking planets you can't capture to deny use to enemy and doing raids and counter intel ops.
Long-term high intensity near pear conflict is brutal - I can indersrand why we got to 3025.
This is why the inner sphere can't have nice things
5:12 what is that little red spot to the northwest of the Laryn Commonwealth?
It's the Finmark Free Republic. I cover it in the last chapter of this video 18:57 onwards.
Just a heads up Sven, If Donegal in Lyran space is named after the place in Ireland, which considering the other names in the region it may be, it's pronounced done-knee-gaul (gawl) , not a criticism as Irish names are... interesting to pronounce... looking at you Maedhbh (mave) and Saoirse (Seer-sha) ;)
Thank you for the correction. My pronunciation of that one swings back and forth each time I say it but I'll endeavour to get it right next time I record.
@@SvenVanDerPlank no worries, extremely glad you do what you do so totally not an issue for a non native Irish speaker to say English words that are based of bastardised Irish 😉 ina different way... as i said we have a weird way of naming stuff 😉
Pronunciation slides around over the next 700+ years
Hang on, *Finnmark* had its own interstellar nation? This may just be my favourite bit of Battletech trivia of all time.
(Finnmark is the northernmost and least populated region of Norway, bordering Troms to the south, the Atlantic/Barentz ocean to the west and north, and Russia and Finland to the east. I grew up just next door to it.)
Always interesting to hear what corners of the globe people are watching from. The flag of the Finmark Free Republic was created by a viewer of the channel, Awesome-Autocrat, combining elements of Norwegian, Greek and House Amaris iconography.
I have a question, if one of the great houses for examaple lets say Marik. Send a message to every one else, we don't care who becomes the First lord, not our problem. We are willing to trade with everyone like we are still memebers of Star League as long as we are left alone. Is there a chance their neighbors would accept this or out of paranoia would the still attack them? Becasue if so that great house would have a big advantage during the Second Succession War if they wanted to try it intead of ignoring all of that bullshit.
Well, if you border Kurita, that definitely isn't going to fly. They do not recognize the legitimacy of any government besides their own. And House Davion legit believes they are the rightful First Lord so they will come after you.
Hypothetically it could make a cease-fire between Steiner and Marik, but the Bolan Thumb exists and that's basically unacceptable to the Lyrans, while the Mariks have spent centuries training a fanatical corps of shock troopers in the Bolan Thumb to fight Lyrans.
Either way, ComStar would probably concoct a way to get you into the war. That's what happened to House Marik in the Second Succession War.
The problem is *that wasn't what they were fighting over.* despite the title, none of the Successor Lords had planned on actually rebuilding a Star League. They went into the Succession Wars with the belief that this was all-or-nothing. That if they didn't conquer the Inner Sphere, they would be subjugated as the others gobbled each other up.
Kurita literally had this as their foreign policy, both prior and post-Star League. The fact that there were multiple Succession Wars never clued the leaders in that this wasn't possible.
Sadly, the loss of the Terran Hegemony as a hub, a neutral power that could act as both a negotiator and as a counterbalance to any one House's power meant that nobody could fill the role the Camerons played. The only group to come close was the Republic of the Sphere, and that... was a failure, in most respects.
Others have already given you some great answers. Without spoiling things, one of the Successor States *does* try exactly what you suggest. You'll see why that doesn't go as you might expect when we reach that point in the second half of the war.
@@watchm4ker Comstar tried to fill this role, albeit as part of their facade once their own agenda got going, then more genuinely once they tried to secularize. But as most know, that also failed.
@@foenrik8941 The problem, ironically, is that Comstar wasn't powerful *enough* to accomplish this. The Hegemony wasn't just neutral, it had an army equal to any other Great House. So, it was placed to not only negotiate, but back up that negotiations with its own fleets and mechs against any side that betrayed the agreements. Since none of the other great houses trusted each other enough to properly ally - not until the creation of the Federated Commonwealth - that allowed the Hegemony to be a deciding factor in any House conflict. That's what allowed the Ares Accords to function in the first place.
Comstar was instrumental in many negotiations and accords, certainly, but they didn't have the ability to act as a counterbalance to the other House Lords. Not only did they not have the military strength - At least, not in any form they were willing to use - but their economic power was surprisingly fragile. The Hegemony was able to offer new technologies and benefits as incentives for negotiations, while Comstar could only really threaten to withhold the services on which the Inner Sphere depended on. All stick, no carrot.
Had Comstar been able to retain control of the core Hegemony worlds, and kept them out of the Succession Wars, there's a good chance they might have been able to create a more stable foundation for a second Star League. But defending such holdings in the face of what was to come would have been... difficult. They barely had the resources to do what they actually did.
What picture is that on the thumbnail??
It's a cityscape by Marco Mazzoni. I think he produced it as concept art for HBS BattleTech.
WOMP
Are you womping all over my videos for the algorithm or am I missing some reference?
@@SvenVanDerPlankI got no clue but when in Rome....
WOMP
@@SvenVanDerPlank it's both but I can't explain the reference for I am sworn to secrecy 😂
Interesting, but too hard to understand what the narrator is saying. Still, I give you thumbs up anyhow :)
Sorry to hear that my narration wasn't clear enough for you. I upload all my scripts as subtitles if that helps you better understand what's being said.
P R O M O S M