Solaris VII

The Inner Sphere's playground

Solaris VII, often known as "The Game World", is a planet in the BattleTech universe, and home to the Solaris Games, the place where all sorts of insane mech-bloodsport and wild mad max shenangans are played out for a ravenous, captive audience.

It is in many ways, the most fun you can have in the Inner Sphere and BattleTech in general.

The Planet itself

Solaris VII hangs in the Solaris system, which happens to sit on the border of the Free Worlds League and the Lyran Commonwealth. It is a rainy, water-rich world with only two continents; Greyland and Equatus. Greyland is the larger continent, with the planetary capital, Solaris City, stamped right in the middle. It is the constantly rain-slicked beating heart of the entire world's operations and events, with most of it's prospective Champions and event coordinating happening right here. It also features a litany of tourist attractions based around the BattleMech and the many, many, many ways you can get in on the fun of the planet's feature attraction. Equatus in contrast, is a mountainous, arid place where people are content to live their lives as simple farm folk, but are often a place where you can enjoy far more personal, grittier competition.

Solaris sits in frontier space for both of the empires it borders, which has placed it in an unusual situation; both will jockey for ownership of it, but they'll never actually put too much restriction or control over the planet. This is a good thing for it's ruling powers, because that might mean it would interrupt Solaris' biggest attraction; the Games.

The Solaris Games

The Games are the reason Solaris VII even finds itself on the map. It is the entertainment capital of the Inner Sphere by way of Mech Battles, having evolved from simple test-fights brought together by defense companies into what it is today over centuries of iteration as an intergalactic bloodsport, gambling, and broadcasting epicenter; with the amount of C-Bills coming in from betting alone probably being enough for Solaris VII to buy it's own freedom if it ever had the time to count the money out for itself or care to do so. The Games attract fans, gamblers, and mechwarriors alike to come experience the fun for glory and for profit for themselves from across the entire Inner Sphere, creating a melting pot built on the pure and simple goal of watching giant robots beat each other to death.

The Games are usually organized by the Solaris Circuit, which organize the hundreds of arenas built specifically to house these robot deathmatches in a fair and honest manner. The Competitors of these games are usually organized into groups of like-minded folk known as Stables, which vary wildly in size, success, stature, and practices. Most of these Stables are usually either long-standing allies with certain Successor States or the pet project of some rich noble who wants to say he owns a sports team, and are usually between ten to forty Mechwarriors deep, with some capable of getting each warrior kitted out individually, or some having to share Mechs between each other.

Match Play

The Solaris Circuit itself is broken up into six classes, separated by weight:

1. Class I: Exoskeleton - Power Armor fights! Heavier on tactical thinking rather than bulldozing your way through fights. Almost assuredly the class that turbonerds watch religiously and insist is the "true" class of fighting.
2. Class II: Light Mech - Mech Lucha Libre. Taking advantage of the speed and agility afforded by Light Mechs, Class 2's fights are often quick and brutal affairs that benefit agility and quick-thinking.
3. Class III: Medium Mech - The delicious creamy middle between survivability and a furious slugfest.
4. Class IV: Heavy Mech - The slower, more ponderous fighting style of the Heavy Mech is showcased, where firepower often wins the day.
5. Class V: Assault Mech - The Mech equivalent of a boxing match destined to go the distance. Class 5 matches pit the largest mech types in the universe against each other in an all-out, grinding slugfest where gritty endurance becomes just as much a part of the fight as the ludicrous amount of firepower.
6. Class VI: Open Match - The Free-for-all. All the previous five classes can come together to have an insane brawl to see who's the best. Only the five arenas in Solaris City are eligible for Open Match games.

The rules of the circuit are universal and simple; all battles are one-on-one, all mechs must pass a safety inspection, all warriors must be 18 years or older to compete, and it is a duel until one teams mechs are either completely destroyed or unable to compete. There are special rules that can be tacked on at organizer or even Mechwarrior discretion, such as the "Weapons Dead" rules, which disable all ranged weapons on the Mech and just has a good ol' fashioned beatdown. There are rules for surrender, as some Stables are broke as hell and might want to keep their machines in one piece, but it is a very risky venture; many Stables have "Surrender Bonds" of a certain hundred thousand dollar amount of C-Bills, expecting the Mechwarrior to fight until his dying breath unless he plans on being in debt to his Stable for the rest of his life.

The Grand Tournament

While singles match combat is the bread and butter of the Games, there's one event that towers above them all; The Grand Tournament. It is a massive 128-mech single elimination tournament that pits the very best of the very best Mechwarriors from across the planet (and sometimes even off-world), to determine who is the best of the best, until there is a single Grand Champion left standing. And you wanna be Grand Champion; you get half a million C-Bills, almost assured merchandising and special broadcast rights, probably a cool title belt or trophy, and will be, in many ways, the regent of Solaris. You will be challenged however, and often, leading to a Grand Champion usually having a busy schedule, but these prize fights are often more lucrative than any other match on-planet. On the off-chance that the Grand Champ gets beaten during one of those challenges, the title is suspended until a rematch is held or the next Grand Tournament is held. If the Champion loses twice, the challenger becomes the new Grand Champion.

Other Games

While Mech Combat is of course the main attraction, there are all sorts of wild combat sports that are played on Solaris VII's soil:

• Blood Pits: The far grittier form of combat popular in the mountainous continent of Equatus. Two AgriMechs walk in, one leaves. Because of the lack of weapons (and hardpoints to place such things), the Mechs would just smash into each other until one stopped working.
• Capture the Flag: As you'd expect it to be, just with Mechs.
• Tank Derbies: A cult sport. Basically tank on tank warfare just with a higher-than-normal chance of survival.
• Dogfight Duels: A popular but quite impractical to watch sport as the speeds the AeroSpace Fighters go require hundreds of cameras and holo projections just to get an idea of where both are and what they're doing. the "safest" sport on Solaris, as both are encouraged to concede rather than go to a needless death (usually because the flaming wreckage would almost certainly come straight down on a settlement).
• Hoverblitz Racing: Death Race meets hovercraft.

Solaris Culture

Just as the Games define the system, the Games define the culture of Solaris as well. Every aspect of living in Solaris City or one of it's many auxiliary towns is geared towards the games; nearly every settlement on the planet has an Arena; with the smaller towns able to keep a Class I or Class II arena steady, while most metropolitan areas can support Class III-V arenas, depending on their size and personal biases from past tournaments or influential stables. Most arenas don't have live crowds due to the seriously dangerous conditions of a BattleMech fight, so often people congregate at holovid terminals to watch the fights. Those arenas that can support a live crowd are almost always using some LosTech to keep the dangerous stuff out of the crowd, and are some of the most profitable places on the planet to be.

The streets of any given Solaris settlement are a never-ending flow of activity: From legions of Mech Techs running around trying to get their stables' Charger up and running for the next match, to gamblers arguing about which mechwarrior will come out on top, to MechBunnies and other fans following star Mechwarriors from place to place, to the criminal element trying to fix matches and collect debts, it's all geared towards making the next game just that much more interesting. Rarely there is a place in Solaris where people aren't bustling about, and it creates a vibrant, chaotic atmosphere that only enhances the feeling of being in Mech-Vegas. Even in Equatus, there's plenty of places called Blood Pits, where no less than what would be qualified as Class I-II matches are held in extremely brutal, "two men enter one man leaves" style rulesets.

Of course, that doesn't mean the Successor States are just sitting back and watching this shit happen from the comfort of their own homes; Solaris City's six neighborhoods have been carved up as enclaves for each Great House (with a single independant neighborhood for independent/recruitment purposes), and each take a special interest in pushing Mechwarriors who just so happen to align with their interests and cultural aims as Champions not only as a propaganda win, but as potential assets as battle-hardened allies should the need arise. This rarely works exactly as the Spheroids intend however, because fighting in an arena is never the same thing as fighting in a real war, where a Mechwarrior is supposed to be a cog (an important cog, but a cog nonetheless) in a larger machine as opposed to the people's champ. Some take to the real life fights well, others make themselves massive headaches for their employers, and are prone to streaks of independence or overdoing it simply because that's what they know how to do.

Solari VII is also a popular hiring hall for clients seeking to employ hired guns, mainly due to churning out MechWarriors who are skilled from fighting in the arena. However, compared to Outreach or Galatea, Solarian mercenaries have a reputation for being solo mavericks with independent streaks instead of whole combat units willing to take orders.

Solarian Mechs

In the past, Solaris was merely a testing ground for defense companies to make sure their product worked as intended in live fire settings. That has long since changed, and while conventional designs do exist in the Games; the theatrical, gladiatorial nature of these contests meant that there was a market for specific designs to be produced only on Solaris for the express purpose of fighting in the Games, and that niche was filled quickly by enterprising companies. Most of them only ever work in tandem with the Games themselves, usually producing their wares in extremely small batches or commissioned directly by the Stables or their benefactors with a particularly interesting idea and the capital to fund it. As such, Solarian Mechs are varied and wild, more like finely tuned works of art rather than a weapon of war.

Solarian Mechs run the gamut of all weight classes, but their commonality is that they embrace the Games bias for up-close and personal action, with most native designs being brawlers almost exclusively, or easily fittable with melee weapons. These mechs are often extremely unique designs only ever seen during the games, with some ideas and weapons occasionally leaking out once they've proven their worth in enough matches.

Notable Mechs

• Daedalus - based off the original Phoenix Hawk, it had an upgraded large laser and missile racks while using speed to avoid being scrapped. Unfortunately, it quickly got obsolete after a while and only upgraded versions are still mainstream while the originals are found in more obscure arenas with smaller budgets.
• Ronin - based off the Centurion, the engineers figured it'd be quicker to just reuse schematics and know-how from a previous BattleMech design than reinvent the wheel. Seeing how Solaris VII started off as a BattleMech testing world, it was a good idea as it shorted the development time to a fraction of the typical period.
• Koto - based off the Locust (which is just as prolific, light, and fast as it's name sake), it was born based off the numerous amount of scrapped Locust parts found all over Solaris VII and the Inner Sphere. While featuring upgraded armor, reallocated internals, and more free space for bigger guns, it still retains old patchwork electronics from its parent and can be prone to random breakdowns due to it's origin as a salvage rework based on recovered parts.
• Prowler - Created for the Clan embassy's Zellbrigan Stables (which served as an outlet for bored Clan Warriors stationed at the facility while managed by Sea Fox merchants), it was ironically based off the Wolverine BattleMech with a lightened internals for upgraded armor and ClanTech weapons. Seeing how the IIC version of the Wolverine Mech was called the "Conjurer" to avoid connotations with the taboo Not-Named Clan, the developers wisely renamed the Mech to be Prowler instead.
• Prometheus - A one of a kind 'Mech developed by the New Avalon Research Institute. While it was frail due to its makeshift nature, it was a monster in the arena thanks to its Clan guns and unique interface systems, which allowed an untrained scientist to fight like a Trueborn. It had, besides a lot of looted Clan tech, a unique form of control system known as the Direct Neural Interface, which allowed the pilot to control Battlemechs like they were part of their own body.
• Epimetheus - The closest thing BattleTech has ever had to a Japanese-style "Super Robot". The Epimetheus was the other unique creation of NAIS' Dark Mirage base. After it was stolen by the Prometheus' pilot and rogue scientist Burk Kale, it was modified so he'd have a more "pure" link with the 'Mech than the one he had before. Unfortunately for Kale, the Prometheus' impurity was the one thing that kept him sane. He went completely insane due to his newfound powet and went on a rampage across Solaris, culminating in an entire city district destroyed and his defeat. While Kale survived, his brain was fried by his Direct Neural Link and he ended up in a coma.