Amaris Civil War
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The Amaris Civil War was a conflict in the BattleTech universe that culminated in the fall of Star League. It was a war between the Rim Worlds Republic, led by Stefan Amaris, and the SLDF, led by Aleksandr Kerensky.
It is to BattleTech what the Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40,000.
History[edit]
Prelude[edit]
The root causes of the Amaris Civil War go back to the Reunification Wars that House Cameron and the SLDF waged against the Periphery States to bring them into the Star League by force. Whereas most of them wanted no part in the Inner Sphere, the Rim Worlds Republic's populace, who were independent-minded, revolted against House Amaris once Gregory Amaris demanded absolute loyalty to himself, the Republic, and the Star League. The revolt took a while to be put down as the SLDF had other immediate enemies to pacify. While House Amaris was publicly "grateful" for the SLDF relieving the besieged capital from the uprising, they held a secret grudge for not responding to their pleas for aid quickly enough despite their eager proclamation of loyalty.
Centuries later, with the early death of Simon Cameron by sabotage that was secretly disguised as an accident, then-Consul Stefan Amaris exploited the situation by maneuvering the young Richard Cameron into distrusting all political figures except himself. To make matters worse, Aleksandr Kerensky, who was forced to act as Regent for the young First Lord, grew bitterly antipathetic with all the major House Leaders for their petty squabbling.
Meanwhile, tensions from the Periphery boiled over and the New Vandenburg uprisings erupted with the Taurians tacitly endorsing the revolts. Kerensky and the bulk of the SLDF were deployed to quell the revolts. Meanwhile, the Rim Worlds Republic Military, who was seen as a poster child for being unusually loyal to House Cameron, were permitted to garrison the Terran Hegemony worlds alongside the skeleton garrisons of the SLDF.
The Coup[edit]
Unbeknownst to all, Stefan Amaris himself was the puppet master who encouraged the Taurians to revolt. With the bulk of the SLDF out of the way, the Republic Military executed a brutal coup d'état. Most SLDF garrisons were killed in their barracks without the ability to defend themselves. Those who resisted instead of going underground were either killed in combat or coerced into surrender with the threat of executing House Cameron under apparent house arrest; only to be forced to literally dig their own graves and be executed.
Meanwhile, Stefan himself murdered all known members of House Cameron secretly on Terra and sealed the capital building's antechamber with their corpses inside. However, Amaris underestimated the security measures put in place, which had picked up the laser blast inside of the audience chamber and immediately alerted the palace guards, as well as the most hardcore regiment ever to exist, the Royal Black Watch. Despite the palace guards getting cut down by hidden lasers in their attempt to get into the chamber and the Black Watch suffering heavy losses due to Amaris dropping nukes on their base, the coup was on the brink of failure as a platoon of guards with jump-packs managed to get on the roof of the chamber and nearly killed Amaris himself before reinforcements arrived.
As that was going on, two Black Watch lances managed to escape the trap and engaged Amaris's elite 4th Amaris Dragoons in an epic last stand that would inflict heavy losses on Amaris's forces all while they refused to die. Eventually, Amaris said 'Fuck it!' and ordered his forces pin the Black Watch down long enough for him to nuke them a second time, losing even more of his troops in the process, and even then five members of the Black Watch still managed to survive and would carry out a guerrilla war against Amaris for the remainder of the civil war. (You heard that right, these guys were so hardcore, that not even NUKES can stop them).
Stefan then pronounced the Amaris Empire as successor to the Terran Hegemony and claimed leadership of the Star League after portraying his coup as a takeover from a decadent Cameron Dynasty. He also gave orders to Kerensky to acknowledge his title as the new head of the Star League and to finish off all the Periphery Rebels after swearing allegiance to him. Meanwhile, the populace was apprehensively ambivalent in public to the regime change besides underground resistance movements (no thanks to the brutal martial law enforced at gunpoint by the Republic's troops). The Great Houses and the Periphery waited with hushed breath.
Upon learning of the coup, Kerensky immediately denounced it, formed a ceasefire with the Taurians (who had realized both they and the SLDF had been tricked), and then launched an invasion to retake the Terran Hegemony after taking over the Rim Worlds Republic.
Invasion of the Rim Worlds Republic[edit]
The society within the Rim Worlds Republic was sharply split with itself. On one hand, sympathizers of the Rift Republic Army from before the Star League loathed Amaris. On the other, the remaining units of Rim World Republic military left in the Republic's territory were fanatically loyal to House Amaris. Both sides started fighting each other as well as pro-SLDF factions. Once the SLDF waded through the 3-sided civil war and eliminated the strongest opposition to them, the Lyrans, decided to permanently remove the Rim Worlds Republic as a threat to their own border (under the disguise of helping Kerensky without his approval) by annexing the bulk of the Rim Worlds Republic. Also, Kerensky managed to accomplish this task in just 3 years, that would require him taking several planets in a single month!
Operation CHIEFTAN[edit]
With the bulk of the Great Houses hedging bets on who to support, the SLDF fought a long and bloody campaign back into Terran Hegemony space. In the end, they were able to breach the orbital defense systems around Terra and Kerensky himself captured Stefan by breaching the gates after Terra was consumed in a bloody meatgrinder. While House Amaris was originally treated fairly as prisoners of war, news of the deaths of House Cameron led to the entire house being executed while any branch families were subjected to lynchings across the Inner Sphere. To make matters worse, any bureaucrat who was a collaborator or tried to "remain neutral" during the Civil War was purged from office; leading to the Terran Hegemony being completely headless at a planetary and interstellar level. All that remained would be Kerensky as Commanding General of the SLDF and Jerome Blake as the future head of the Star League's Department of Communications (which evolved into the entity known as ComStar).
Aftermath[edit]
With the eradication of House Cameron and with the Terran Hegemony reduced to an ashen husk, there was no longer a viable center of gravity that could hold the Star League together. While many speculated that perhaps Kerensky himself could take the reins, the Great Houses (who already hated him when he was acting as Richard Cameron's regent) immediately stripped him of his titles. And while the SLDF was capable of crushing any singular state military, they had been decimated, lost over 75% of their strength, and were outnumbered by the collective numbers of all the national militaries combined. Understandably, Kerensky decided that the only way to save the Star League was to take its fighting force into exile with hopes that the spirit of the empire can survive while acting as the Sword of Damocles over the Great Houses heads to prevent the Inner Sphere from falling into a vicious period of war. Unfortunately, he failed with the Succession Wars occurring while SLDF would disintegrate before mutating after his death under the iron grip of his son, Nicholas Kerensky. The fact Nicholas Kerensky was forced to live from childhood to adulthood underground while on the run with the SLDF resistance on Terra played a key role in how jaded he was with the powers that be before he decided to recreate society from scratch by force.