Outworlds Alliance

Outworlds/Raven Alliance
Capital	Alpheratz
Official Languages	English
Size	36 controlled worlds, 41 by the time Clan Snow Raven joined
Head of State	President of the Parliament, later Khan
Governmental Structure	Parliamentary Confederacy
State Religion/Ideology	Initially non-aggression, later being sneaky fuckers.
Military Force	Alliance Military Corps Clan Snow Raven Touman

The Outworlds Alliance is a Periphery power in the BattleTech universe, typically known for being the embodiment of the harsh reality of what it means to live on the Periphery. During the Word of Blake Jihad, they eventually made friends with Clan Snow Raven and combined their forces into one hybrid state.

History

The Outworlds Alliance has long been the hard luck state of the Periphery, sandwiched beside the Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine. When the Reunification Wars began, the Star League had only known the Alliance as a backwater full of peaceniks and conscientious objectors who wanted to be left alone, and so decided to just garrison them rather than outright conquer them, in the name of peace and mutual defense. However, tensions rose between the Combine, the Star League, and the Alliance themselves, until finally the Combine fucked up by mass-slaughtering civilians on the Alliance planet of Santiago in 2572, causing a massive shitstorm to ensue. Realizing that the Inner Sphere would never help them, the President of Parliament, Grigori Avellar, decided to strike a secret deal to begin creating an army to keep the Star League out, and the Federated Suns would hand over some of their best tech at the time to help them do it.

The wars were costly, and almost 12 million Alliance citizens perished in the Reunification wars, but they ultimately made the Star League's conquest an enormously costly one. They were battered and bruised, but they had survived. And then the Combine fucked up again by helping fund a coup... of a true Alliance patriot who ended up being a savvy economist and diplomat, turning the Alliance from obnoxious backwater to helpful ally to both Suns and Combine alike. However, once that guy bit the dust, it was mostly a series of cascading failures that were only saved through being neutral or by being too far below the notice of the larger powers. Eventually, after the Jihad, the moribund state was given a shot in the arm by shacking up with Clan Snow Raven, who desperately needed friends to help them avoid getting Reaved, marking the creation of the Raven Alliance.

House Avellar and "House" McKenna

House Avellar is the noble house that has largely held the title of President of the Parliament for centuries, and typically has had to spend its time trying to keep the Alliance's immediate neighbors from setting everything on fire for the mere crime of looking at them funny, leading to all sorts of unfit and useless rulers that systematically weakened an already ailing state. Only very recently has House Avellar managed to get its act together through the "Long Road" economic project.

Since their transition to a hybrid government and the introduction of Clan Snow Raven's social structure in their nobility, they have ironically become more like a typical Inner Sphere state, given their addiction to realpolitik. The McKenna Bloodname (which is also distantly related to the founder of the Terran Hegemony) has also been given plenty of power to defend the nation's interests, acquitting themselves wonderfully to their new pet project of slowly building and strengthening the Alliance, while also pitting the Combine and the Federated Suns against each other with varied success, always able to avoid detection.

Society

Life in the Outworlds Alliance is roughing it as a matter of necessity, in turn driven by policy. Due to a weak central government that has plagued the Alliance for centuries, many planets have varying levels of safety, literacy, technology, and amenities thanks to the ultimate problem of many of their worlds being largely colonized by farming folk, non-fighters, and extremely few scientists and researchers, seeing relatively very little need for the technology until it was far too late. The Alliance would effectively be verging on a third world status, were it not for effective and powerful laser technology developments making for good trading. Generous incentives have also turned many border worlds into trade hubs, though of course that means they're often plagued with pirates, smugglers, drug runners, food shortages and other such ills, so it's a double-edged sword.

Life for the citizenry didn't drastically improve under the Raven Alliance, but it has been better in some crucial regards, as Clan Snow Raven's technological superiority allowed them to uplift dozens of worlds from abject poverty and otherwise allow them to keep their local cultures (because Clan Snow Raven had about all they could of the Clanner way of doing things back in Clan Space). Bondsmen that join up in their military still often run into the same spiderweb of Snow Raven politics that most newbies are brought into, but given the choice between that and the old days, where water was a precious commodity and your weaponry was near-20th century level, most prefer the Touman system.

Military

Because the Outworlds were considered a farming commune, they didn't have a major army until the 26th century, and frequently paid for that throughout their history. Being woefully undergunned and understaffed due to the central government's ineffectiveness at bringing people together until it was clear problems were too big to ignore, most of the Outworld Alliance's defense came from Mercenary units that the individual planets hired to do their bidding, with the army only really getting involved when it absolutely had to; the Alliance's leadership was very cognizant of how small and poorly organized the army was, and as a result spent far more time doing careful negotiation to get on the good side of much larger powers than anything else.

This changed under the rule of Clan Snow Raven, whose smaller but very tactically devious Touman ensured that defense of the Alliance is all but assured, though they themselves also feel that diplomacy and careful political maneuvering means they shouldn't have to. Their 'Mechs before and since the Clan integration are your typical periphery fare, while also favoring generalists since the Alliance is frequently finding itself facing all manner of threats without a concrete plan.

Notable BattleMechs

• Merlin: A miraculous design considering that for almost 100 years in-universe a new 'Mech design hadn't come out, and that it came from the Alliance of all places. It served its duties well as a generalist 'Mech able to hit at short and long range using only the most readily available parts and electronics, meaning that not only is it decent at what it's intended to do, it's also extremely easy to repair.

• Night Hawk: Designed by the Star League to counteract Periphery raiding parties, they were left over in bulk for the nascent Alliance to use. It's a fast light 'Mech that uses lots of energy weapons, bolstered by use of double-heat sinks so that it doesn't immediately cook the pilot within.

• War Crow: Sterling McKenna's personally commissioned OmniMech. She preferred a steady-paced generalist OmniMech that could form the backbone of most operations now that the Raven Alliance was likely a target. Its alternate configurations mostly just try to either turn it into a skirmisher or a sniper depending on the need.