|
|
The Human Sphere is a BattleTech universe set in 3100. The Jihad has come and gone, leaving in its wake dozens of small realms in a perpetual cycle of raids and small wars. Will you seek money or defend your nation? Or both? You decide.
"Anything is possible, if you don't care who gets the credit." - Harry Truman
Tamar Pact
History
Formed in 2235 by the Tamar family, the Tamar Pact originally covered the region between Nox, Suk II, and Fatima. Two Tamar brothers found the world they named Tamar in 2331, and they made it the capital of their realm, a vast collection of rich and industrialized systems. The fall of the Star League and the Succession Wars resulted in the loss of half of their realm to the Draconis Combine, a grievous wound to the proud nation. The Fourth Succession War, with the help of the Federated Suns, gave them hope that they could recover their worlds. They were proud beyond measure when they took the worlds, and betrayed beyond equal measure when the Archon gave those worlds to Rasalhague. It was a betrayal that ate into the hearts of Tamar and never healed.
The Clan War further shattered the Tamar Pact, leaving its capital under Clan Wolf control and only a handful of worlds still under Tamar authority. But the cruelest of slights, after spending over a decade promising the return of Tamar worlds, performed by the Lyran government was the removal of the Tamar Pact as an independent military and diplomatic region. They were a founding member state of the Commonwealth, along with the Protectorate of Donegal and the Federation of Skye. They were not the property of Donegal and would never easily accept being placed under Donegal command. Decades of betrayals and lack-luster support courtesy of the Steiner family had embittered them, and that final act festered in their minds.
Especially when it was Duke Robert Kelswa-Steiner, the last in the line of rulers of the Pact, who had spent his time and money building the Tamar Cavaliers and not the Lyran government, which had once valued Tamar. That act gave him their loyalty, and when Hermione Kelswa-Steiner was nearly killed on Tharkad, they gladly followed him into secession. To their surprise, the Kell family on Arc-Royal did as well, pledging to protect the Tamar Pact with their substantial resources. Then the Word of Blake struck, nearly killing the Archon, evidence suggests that the Kell family were preparing to support the Alliance despite their disagreements when Clan Jade Falcon boiled across the border in January of 3068.
Thinking to find an easy conquest in an Alliance fighting the Word, they instead found the Kell family, the Wolves-In-Exile, and the Tamar Cavaliers. They also found six full regimental combat teams and assorted other units of mercenary and Lyran origins who had declared for the Pact waiting for them. The Falcons wiped out the Twenty-Third Arcturan Guards to a man on Graus, pushing both Wolf clusters there back further into Tamar space, and shattered the Third Lyran Guard on Crimond, though the Tamar Cavaliers and Sixth Lyran Guard on Tomans managed to hold them off. The Eleventh Donegal Guard, First Kell Hounds, and Third Wolf Guards weathered an assault on Graceland, pushed the Falcons off, and followed them back to Pandora, starting a battle there that went on until 3074 and became the worst meat-grinder in the war. Other Jade Falcon forces smashed into Morges and other worlds of the Tamar Pact closer to the galactic core, rolling up defenders as the Tamar forces desperately tried to shore up their defenses.
By the time the Fourteenth Lyran Guard and the Fourth Lyran Regulars arrived, along with a heavy force of Skye military units, the Clan front was beginning to collapse. With the help of those reinforcements, and the arrival of the Pride of Tamar from now-shattered Tharkad, the Tamar Pact began to hold the line against the Falcons, though their casualties continued to mount across the width and breadth of the Pact. Months faded into years as the fighting continued, and rumors began to come into Tamar space saying that Clan Wolf was preparing to join in on the attack.
Then more rumors arrived telling of Clan Hell’s Horses returning to the Inner Sphere and assaulting Clan Wolf. Historians now know that their arrival saved the Tamar Pact from a major invasion it could not have survived, but at the time all the Pact knew was that the rumored invasion of their lands didn’t come. Instead they “only” had to deal with a renewed Falcon push. New production and trainees continued to pour into the Pact from Skye factories and schools, replenishing lost machines and warriors for the fight against the Falcons. Then in August of 3071 Khan Vlad Ward died over Csesztreg with his command ship, fighting the Hell’s Horses, and the Ghost Bears invaded Clan Wolf in December. Word of those actions didn’t arrive in the Tamar Pact until January, but when it did the Wolves-In-Exile pulled together their most powerful remaining units and jumped into the Clan Wolf Occupation Zone to support their cousins.
Without the Wolves’ best forces, the Tamar Pact nearly fell to the Jade Falcons. Soon after they left, the last vestiges of an organized defense in the Alliance’s Melissa Theatre collapsed, leaving Tamar the only foil to Falcon advances, and the Clan shifted all of its forces to hit them like a sledgehammer. They steamrolled over every defense until they hit Arc-Royal but were pushed back by the Kell Hounds and several mercenary units, then dropped on Bountiful Harvest with a force powerful enough destroy three regiments. Facing them were the Twenty-Second Skye Rangers and the Tamar Cavaliers, dug in and ready for a fight. The Falcons advanced across the planet, destroying one defending fortification after another and bleeding the defenders white. But the Rangers and Cavaliers held on, pulling every trick in the book and inventing new ones as time went on, making the Falcons pay for every meter they took. By 3073, more than three-quarters of the planet was under Falcon rule, most of it smashed flat by the fighting.
Then in March, the Falcons marched onto their DropShips and left the planet, what was left of it, in the clutches of the bewildered defenders. The Pact later found out that raids from what is now known as Clan Snord and invasion forces from Clan Hell’s Horses had irritated the Falcons enough to being pulling forces back from the fight against Tamar. The Tamar and Skye forces began slowly picking up worlds, but the Falcons held on for another year in Pandora, seeing the Wolves-in-Exile help Clan Wolf stop both the Hell’s Horses and Ghost Bear invasions before sitting back to lick their wounds and refit. Then in February of 3074, the reconstituted Clan Wolf smashed into the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone and the Falcons simply didn’t have the forces needed to hold them off. In March they began to retreat back to Sudeten to consolidate their forces around a border that was easier to defend as they tried desperately to hold off the Hell’s Horses. The rest of the year found the desperate battles seen throughout the Tamar Pact tapering off in favor of the slow march of exhausted and shattered troops into new battles.
One planet fell at a time as they carefully chose their targets, finally able to concentrate what was left of their forces. With the, albeit heavily reduced, resources of Clan Wolf on their side the fate of the Tamar Pact was finally secure, even if each of them had been shattered by the fighting. With Skye help, they would have been able to completely roll up the Falcons and kick them out of the Inner Sphere. But then the reinforcements from Skye began to taper off as it prepared for another assault, and the envisioned total assault on the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone never materialized. The Tamar Pact had to content itself with retaking a handful of worlds cautiously as Skye smashed into the remains of the nearby Draconis Combine, still reeling under Word of Blake attack. By the end of 3075, the border between the Jade Falcons and the Tamar Pact had stabilized to approximately the same border as it has now.
With the Word of Blake finally pushed out of Lyran Alliance space, the nearby Blackstone Authority, supported by the Coventry Division, finally succeeded in stabilizing a new front line with the Jade Falcons as well, stopping them from expanding in that direction too. With the Falcon border stabilized, the Wolf border no longer a threat, the Rasalhague and Dominion borders quiet, and the Draconis Combine smashed into blithering incompetence, Skye pulled its remaining forces out of the Tamar Pact and began sending them to help the Star League at Terra. Tamar spent the rest of the Jihad rebuilding their forces, taking a world whenever they had a chance, and defending against Lyran assault forces trying to reclaim “their” worlds.
After the Jihad and the formal merging of the Ghost Bears and the remnants of Rasalhague, Tamar and Clan Wolf began to grow closer, training forces together and fighting on each others’ worlds against mutual neighbors. And in September of 3082, after turning fifteen years of age, Selvin Kelswa-Steiner began to visit the worlds of the Tamar Pact. Traveling as far as Tamar in the Clan Wolf Occupation Zone, he fell in love with the Tamar branch of his father’s realm. The 3080s were mostly peaceful, outside of heavy raids by the Jade Falcons and the reformed Lyran Commonwealth, though in 3087 a Lockheed squadron nearly wiped out Selvin’s fleet. That started a quick skirmish of raids between the Commonwealth and Tamar that went on until June of 3088.
Then word reached Arc-Royal that Duke Robert Kelswa-Steiner had been shot by an assassin and died three days later. When Selvin’s twentieth birthday came around on 29 August, 3088, the young man declared himself Duke of Tamar and officially seceded from the combined state his father had commanded for the last twenty years. He has remained on good terms with his mother, now commanding the Federation of Skye, her new husband, and the Federation of Skye in general, but has continued to champion a return to Tamar.
The 3090s have seen a slow ramping up of conflict on the Jade Falcon and Lyran Commonwealth borders, as both try to take systems they consider to be theirs, but with Kell Hound and Wolf support the Tamar Pact has been able to push back every major assault. Some smaller ones have broken through for short periods, and the border is always in flux, but Tamar continues to hold its own. Many observers believe that Tamar will follow the Rasalhague Solution in the near future, their opinions bolstered by the dalliance between Selvin Kelswa-Steiner and Khan Anastasia Kerensky, the current holder of Natasha Kerensky’s Bloodname. Should it happen, the combined state would be one of the most powerful nations in the Human Sphere.
Relations with the Rasalhague Dominion are generally peaceful, though honorable raids conducted by Trials of Possession are common. The Jade Falcons do not bother with such niceties when fighting either Inner Sphere or Warden barbarians. They are on friendly terms with the Azami Caliphate as well, and of course are very friendly with the Federation of Skye to this day. The Lyran Commonwealth however considers the Tamar Pact to be “in rebellion” and continues to attempt to retake the Tamar worlds, so far without success.
Military
Arctic Wolf II, and Mad Cat OmniMechs dominate the Tamar front line military, giving them excellent flexibility in combat. Built with full clan engineering, they are a powerful force in battle. Second line units mostly use Arctic Wolf, Pack Hunter, Verfolger, and Wolfhound BattleMechs. While not as versatile, those standard BattleMechs are cheaper and easier to maintain. The Heimdall OmniTank is the primary combat vehicle in their main battle formations, while skirmishing and scout units are filled out with Centipede, Condor, and Pegasus HoverTanks.
The Tamar Space Force is primarily composed of Eisensturm OmniFighters, used to perform ground support and to guard the numerous Baldur and Hodur frigates in the fleet. A number of Fredasa destroyers and a single Fox I, the Robert Kelswa, command the various naval squadrons, while the flagship of the Tamar Navy is the Aegis-class Tamar. Originally the Jade Falcon White Talon, it was captured by the Wolves-in-Exile long ago and renamed the Jade Wolf. They gifted it to the Tamar Pact in 3088, shortly after Selvin decreed the secession from the Federation of Skye, while the Robert Kelswa had been in Tamar hands since the beginning of the war against the Falcons.
Pride of Tamar
Tamar Tigers – Tropic Lightning
1st Tamar Cavaliers – The Archers
6th Tamar Cavaliers – Saucy Sixth
14th Tamar Cavaliers – The Fearsome Fourteenth
11th Tamar Hussars – The Falcon Slayers
17th Tamar Hussars – The Cheshire Cats
1st Kell Hounds
2nd Kell Hounds
Wolf Guards Royal Cluster
Factories
Arc-Royal – Arc-Royal MechWorks – Arctic Fox, Arctic Wolf II, and Mad Cat OmniMechs; Arctic Wolf, Pack Hunter, Verfolger, and Wolfhound BattleMechs; Satyr, Chrysaor, and Roc ProtoMech
– Arc-Royal SpaceWorks – Fredasa Destroyer, Baldur and Hodur frigates, Eisensturm Aerospace fighter
– Arc-Royal MetalWorks – Heimdall OmniTank
Pandora – Red Devil Industries – BattleMaster and Rifleman BattleMechs, Centipede, Condor, and Pegasus Hovercraft.
Systems
A Place – A desolate world with rich mineral resources, A Place has never been able to feed itself from what it raises from its meager topsoil. During the First Succession War ninety percent of its population died from starvation and the population never returned to Star League levels. Traded back and forth between the Jade Falcons and the Tamar Pact during the Jihad, the population dropped further due to more starvation and to refugees fleeing the system. Now down to less than 50,000 citizens, this border world between the Pact and Clan Jade Falcon is slowly slipping into extinction.
Arc-Royal – A pleasant, pastoral world of mild weather and remarkable beauty, this world is also the center of the mercenary trade in the Tamar Pact. Selvin Kelswa-Steiner rules the Pact from this world, with the help of the powerful Kell family and their military. Some members of Clan Wolf still live on this world, though most have moved to the Wolf Ascendancy.
Blair Atholl – A dreary world covered by constant drizzling rains, troops squelch through a landscape blanketed by an enormous amount of fungi, varying in size and shape but uniformly drab in color.
Borghese – Approximately eighty percent of this world is covered in saltwater, with only a single major continent slightly smaller than Australia. Electrical storms and crashing waves have kept most of the population away from the shores, but the brave men who fish the delicious mermaid-like creatures out of the oceans can retire rich men or women.
Bountiful Harvest – The location of one of the heaviest battles between Clan Jade Falcon, Tamar, and Skye forces, the Bountiful Delicacies’ property on this world took heavy damage before the Falcons left. Nashan Foods appreciated the damage done to their competition, until the Kell family helped rebuild Bountiful Delicacies’ facilities by nationalizing Nashan’s branch and giving it to Bountiful Delicacies. This world is slightly larger than Terra and sports large tracts of flat land and fertile soil, bright beautiful oceans, and an amazing temperate climate that makes it one of the most fertile planets in the Human Sphere.
Crimond – Rich in precious metals, stones, and vast petroleum reserves, this world significantly impacts the economy of the Tamar Pact, helping it afford the vast amounts of military equipment it must build to protect it from Falcon incursions.
Deia – The most heavily fortified world in the Tamar Pact, tens of thousands of fortifications dot its landscape and make it a veritable nightmare to any Jade Falcon raiders.
Dustball – Once the seat of power for the Malthus crime family, they moved their operations elsewhere after the Clan War and Archon Melissa Steiner-Davion conspired to ruin their business. A small, hot world, its only use for the Tamar Pact is as a training center for their military.
Fatima – A rich world, it sports deposits of some of the best obsidian in the Tamar Pact.
Fort Loudon – Home of a Castle Brian and rich veins of precious metals, this world on the border of the Rasalhague Dominion and the Wolf Ascendancy is the “host” of many raids from those two clans. Neither of them have ever tried to take the world though, and the military garrison there is very small, only large enough to engage them in honorable trials for metals.
Graceland – The current seat of power for the Malthus crime family, they have recovered much of the riches they lost due to the Clan War and Archon Melissa Steiner-Davion. Covered in casinos and places designed to indulge in any and all pursuits of happiness and pleasure, Graceland is the destination of millions of visitors a year.
Koniz – One of the most heavily fortified worlds in the Tamar Pact, the local militia has spent the last four decades putting a good percentage of the local economy into making it a veritable nightmare for attackers. During the Jihad, a Jade Falcon force did arrive on Koniz and attempted to conquer the world. The militia gave them a bloody fight from a progression of fortresses until the Falcons abandoned the offensive to deal with Clan Snord and Clan Hells Horses.
Morges – The austral polar continent, Austrartica, is uninhabited by civilians and, during the winter months it is locked into non-stop blizzards and temperatures that can freeze a man in minutes. When the Tamar Pact reconquered this world from the Falcons, they set up a series of heavy fortifications on every continent, including Austrartica.
New Exford – The headquarters of Nashan Foods, a major competitor to Bountiful Delicacies, and the Voyager Christian Church, New Exford is covered in farms.
Pandora – Once the location of two major military industries, the Clan War cut it down to one but the local nobility managed to blackmail the second factory complex into staying. The FedCom Civil War changed that though as Clan Jade Falcon captured the world during that conflict. They quickly divested the corrupt nobility of their power, and their heads, and cleaned the factory complex up. When the Jihad erupted and the Falcons attacked again, it came under Tamar Pact control again and the factories were nationalized under Kell family control, where they remain to this day.
Rasalgethi – Colonized by Norwegians, 100 meter-tall hardwood forests, mountains, and glaciers dominate this world.
Yeguas – Yeguas III's moon is named Cue Ball.