Pryde Rock Museum of History

You enter the museum and are awed by the sight of hologram projectors and computer terminals filling the room. The projectors and screens give information on nearly anything you can think of, replacing the old static, physical museums you have visited with constantly changing views and vistas.

One projector is labeled Earth - 1945, and shows what appears to be a battle between ancient tanks and common infantry men, some raising a red, white, and blue flag high over the battlefield. Other projectors show peaceful scenes across the Inner Sphere, or more battle replays.

You walk forward and access the projector labeled Pryde Rock.

In the last days of the Star League, before the murder of the First Lords, the Star League decided to build a hidden factory complex beyond the farthest edges of the Inner Sphere. Records recovered suggest that several such complexes were suppose to be built on up to one dozen worlds surrounding the Inner Sphere, but the records are incomplete and it is not known if any of the other complexes were finished.

Before Kerensky left, he ordered to facility mothballed except for a small team of scientists who would remain and continue researching advanced technologies. Unfortunately, the techs died of a particularly vicious virus before getting beyond redesigning a smaller, more powerful Phoenix Hawk Land-Air-Mech.

For centuries, the complex remained abandoned.

But in 3055, a pirate force found the world to be a convenient base for raids into the Marian Hegemony and found the storehouse section of the complex. They slowly began pulling mechs and vehicles out of mothballs and began using them on their raids, and the Hegemony hired the relatively new merc unit Terra's Pryde to dispatch a pirate band in the periphery.

Terra's Pryde's Second Pryde slagged the pirates and found the storehouses.

They claimed the planet as their own, renaming it Pryde Rock and decided to leave their Union class dropship and her medium 'mech company to garrison the planet. Second Pryde emptied the storehouses of mechs, vehicles, and supporting dropships and left for Outreach. At Outreach, they met up with First Pryde and shared the salvage from the last missions they had been on and recruited new members to fill out their ranks. They also contacted Comstar and offered the once mystical organization control of the manufacturing facilities for 15 years in exchange for "classified" Comstar support.

Terra's Pryde is came under contract to protect the factory complexes on Pryde Rock and the surrounding areas from all aggressers. Not surprisingly, every small city that has been started up, as well as the civilian housing for Terra's Pryde family members, were constructed within these surrounding areas.

By 3060, Pryde Rock Industries had begun building refitted versions of several old StarLeague mechs featuring advanced weapon systems built solely within the Pryde Rock system. The Star League construction equipment, laying in mothballs for 3 centuries, was still in perfect condition and Pryde Rock Industries slowly geared up production to make a small number of these war machines each year.

The contract required that all mechs and vehicles produced at Pryde Rock be sent to the Free Rasalhague Republic or Comguard, with the exception of a handful that have been sold to Terra's Pryde at cost. From the beginning, it also became the custom that Terra's Pryde would test the prototypes as well.

When the conflict in the St. Ives Compact began, First Pryde went to support them and defense of Pryde Rock fell to the lighter Second Pryde. It was then that the Marian Hegemony, twice stung by Terra's Pryde, decided that Second Pryde would be too weak to hold Pryde Rock from a determined assault. Five regiments of Hegemony troops arrived in the Pryde Rock system, and the Second Battle of Pryde Rock began.

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