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Star League

2022-05-13T02:07:02Z

2607:FB90:6FFA:FFE0:95C6:5792:83B8:4251: /* Origins */

{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name=
|image= [[Image:StarLeague1.png|200px]]
|bgcolor= Navy
|fgcolor= #A2ECE6
|Capital= Terra, Asta, Altair, Fomalhaut, Procyon, Sirius, and Rigil Kentarus
|Official Languages= Any human language
|Power=
|Size= The Entire Inner Sphere
|Head of State= First Lord
|Head of Government=
|Governmental Structure= Confederation
|State Religion/Ideology=
|Demographics=
|Military Force=*Star League Defense Force
}}
{{Topquote|The Fall of Rome seemed unthinkable to the people at the time, but inevitable to historians reflecting upon it with the benefit of context.|Mary Pilon}}

{{Topquote|To all citizens of the Inner Sphere do I, Aleksandr Kerensky, send greetings. Know that I have taken the remnant of the Star League Defense Force which has remained true to its purpose beyond the boundaries of the Inner Sphere, beyond the Periphery. I have done this, neither out of disappointment with those whom we leave behind, nor out of spite or disdain, as some will say. No, we have left the Inner Sphere because we love it too much to see it destroyed. In the wake of the Usurper's coup, and the long, bitter fighting that came with it, I fear that my forces would do incalculable, possibly irreparable, harm to our society. We are sworn to ward the Star League and its subjects, not destroy it. Thus, we have left the only homes we have ever known to place the destructive capability of this armada beyond the reach of those who would use it, not for defense, but for conquest. Perhaps, with the might of our 'Mechs and ships out of reach, the leaders who now grapple with one another will relinquish their dreams of subjugating their neighbors and learn to live in peace with them. Perhaps, one day, should mankind step back from the brink of the abyss, we, our children, or our children's children will return, to once more serve and protect and guide the Star League in mankind's quest for the stars. Farewell.|Aleksandr Kerensky}}

'''The Star League''' was a faction in [[Battletech]] that existed from 2570 to 2780, a rough political confederation encompassing most worlds colonized by humanity at that point, with House Cameron at it's head. It is in many ways the high point to which humanity ascended before everything went to shit following it's dissolution.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
The Star League was born of the Age of War, where pretty much all of the Inner Sphere was fighting each other over resources, territory, and technology. Centuries of battle had taken their toll on the weary populace, and the Terran Hegemony, itself merely a small player in the now larger Inner Sphere, had seen an opportunity to maybe cut down on the killings and warfare, especially now that the Battlemech had become the default way of war. The process began in earnest with two noblemen; Albert Marik, and Ian Cameron. Both were extremely disillusioned with the worlds they inherited; Marik and the [[Free Worlds League|FWL]] constantly trying to take the planet Andurien, and Cameron having to deal with the fact that while the Hegemony was still the most technologically advanced state, Terra and its nearby planets had been completely drained of resources, and the Hegemony being relatively small and surrounded by hostile factions at the time meant it could have very easily been subsumed by some other group or coalition if they didn’t set up some safety net. Further, it would have meant that for the first time, man's first home would not matter in the grand scheme of things. Cameron, an idealist, couldn't allow this to happen whatsoever, and began drafting his idea for what would become a massive interstellar confederation that would bring the Age of War to an end. And it started with Albert Marik.

Cameron showed up over the planet of Andurien to sue for peace against the FWL and the nascent [[Capellan Confederation]], who had been fighting for what was now centuries over a single star-system. The Chancellor at the time, Terrence Liao, had no interest in signing a peace treaty for he saw it as a way to legitimize himself, and only dug himself deeper. Albert Marik on the other hand, was far more receptive of the idea, having inherited the Andurien Wars and was exhausted from the quagmire, and indeed was swayed by Cameron's cause. A few more years of war left the Capellans battered, and when Cameron tried again, Terrence, a much older, humbled man, was all too willing to take the suit for peace, especially since it meant Andurien became Capellan property.

From there, Cameron brought Marik and Liao together, and they brought an end to the Andurien Wars with a peace treaty. But far more importantly, in the Terran city of Geneva, they signed a secret second treaty: the establishment of a 50-year implementation treaty that would turn the Terran Hegemony into the Star League. Thus began years of negotiation with the Steiners, the Davions, and especially the Kuritas, all of whom were at first unconvinced of Cameron's desires, and the concept of the league itself, but were at long last swayed by his persuasiveness and his honest, simple goal of uniting humanity. Finally, all three houses agreed, and in 2569, the Combine joined in. Two years later, the Star League was signed into law and all parties joined.

Ian Cameron signed his name on the document, [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|punctuating it with a single tear just above his name]], the only time he had ever faltered in the quest to bring the myriad warring nations together, and he was declared First Lord of the Star League.

=== Height of Glory ===
[[Image:StarLeagueCameron.png|300px|thumb|left|The Federation if it had balls.]]
Now that he had consolidated power in the Inner Sphere, Cameron immediately set about pumping up the Star League's combined military might into dragging the Periphery back under a Terran ruler, which presented a bit of a problem: the [[Taurian Concordat|Taurians]] and the [[Magistracy of Canopus|Canopians]] did ''not'' care for the Inner Sphere as a matter of principle due to their founders being scornful of the Inner Sphere's corruption, and the [[Outworlds Alliance]] had largely been a proxy for House Kurita's expansionism at the time with realpolitik focused on balancing Draconis and Suns relations. Thus sparked the Reunification Wars, where they dragged all parties involved into an all-out, drag 'em down war where two of the three powers got seriously merked, and forced through a lengthy rebuilding process. By the end of it all however, Ian Cameron had died, and his son Nicholas had taken over.

Because there really weren't any real frontiers left to conquer (there was the Deep Periphery, but at that point it was like saying you wanted to conquer a bunch of farms out in the boondocks. It just wasn't worth the effort.), the Star League put it's money towards technology, and under Nicholas' reign, many of the great things that the BattleTech universe takes for granted were discovered, created, and then put into practice; the HPG network, neural-dimensional computing, advanced water purification, and major advances in medical technology such as the Stasis Tube. Star Leaguers were by and large some of the richest, most fulfilled, most well educated, and in general best lived people in the entire history of mankind. And while the Star League Defense Force and House Cameroon did have to deal with secretly state-sanctioned piracy or skirmish disputes during the Hidden Wars with the Great Houses, the League's planets and citizens by and large were relatively peaceful with modestly advanced technology shared by the Terran Hegemony.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't last forever.

=== Downfall ===
While their might was considerable, one thing that had become increasingly clear is that after Michael Cameron's death in 2602, the Camerons began a slow but steady decline in impactful leadership. All others after Michael were a pretty quick descent into numerous failsons and paranoid dipshits that ultimately only enriched the SLDF at the expense of everybody else, and their hesitance in the face of inter-league conflict meant that the myriad powers of the League began to believe that they were becoming more important to the League than the League was to them. This, on top of tensions from the Periphery States treated as second-class members with no voting power inevitably led to brush-fire revolts among dissatisfied Periphery citizens. This ultimately led to a coup by the madman Stefan Amaris, who gained the First Lord Nicholas II's trust, and then slew him in a grand show of destruction, and declared himself the new leader of the Star League. The SDLF's commander-general, Alexandr Kerensky, was having absolutely none of that shit, and began the [[Amaris Civil War]], which spanned all the way from the Periphery back down to Terra, and in an extremely bloody confrontation, Kerensky finally, personally, put Amaris down, and ended the so called "Amaris Empire".

But the war had also left the Star League in tatters: worlds were devastated, the entire Terran Hegemony's bureaucracy was gutted by pro-Amaris and pro-SLDF purges, and House Cameron had gone completely extinct. To make matters worse, many powers making up the Star League were now all squabbling and declaring themselves as true heir to the Star League. Worse, Kerensky expected that he'd be called upon to support any one of the Houses that were trying to take over the now-very-dead League, and he'd just spent 14 bloody years feeding his men into a meatgrinder to save it. While the overwhelming majority of the Star League's citizens supported Kerensky if he were to take the throne, all of the Great Houses distrusted him and stripped him of his leadership titles. So on the half-joke of a colleague, he brought [[ComStar]]'s Primus Jerome Blake in to tell him he was going to leave the inner sphere altogether, with as many members of the SLDF as he could, and he would like his help in masking his retreat. Blake naturally resisted, since that meant ComStar was just as susceptible to control, but he ultimately backed down out of respect for Kerensky and after Kerensky negotiated the integration of the SLDF remnants who stayed behind to serves as the Com Guard. With that, the last vestiges of the Star League, it's defense force, left the Inner Sphere entirely, never to be seen again until their grandchildren came back as [[the Clans]].

From there on, the [[Succession Wars]] began.

== Military ==
In general the policy of House Cameron would be to try to get the Inner Sphere to demilitarize as a matter of principle. Mostly through diplomacy and other soft means. A typical pitch would be something along the lines of ''"Things are peaceful nowadays and Mechs and Warships are expensive, dude. We got the Lyrans to scale back their stuff last year and you'll look like a jerk if you didn't cut back a little, ya know. Take a chill pill, give your subjects a tax break and we'll go party on Canopus. Howbout that?"'' [[noblebright|and for the most part, it worked.]]

But for those occasions when diplomacy failed, Star League had the Star League Defense Force (think of a mix of the French Foreign Legion with the UN Peacekeeping Force and you get the idea). Recruiting from all Star League member states, the SLDF grew into the biggest military in the galaxy, and not only did they have the best training, people, and equipment, they had mechs so good it blew everyone else's out of the water. They had the first assault-class mech with fucking jump jets. That's how good they were. They also, somehow, managed to largely be more loyal to the Star League than their parent nations. Sure, there were units that went running to daddy when the assholes started tearing apart humanity, but by and large the SLDF stayed united.

After the Fall of the Star League and unwilling to get involved, the majority of what SLDF forces under the command of Alexander Kerensky left the Inner Sphere for parts unknown. [[The Clans|In the Deep Periphery, they would follow their own radically different course of cultural evolution]].

==== Notable Mechs ====
* '''''Black Knight''''': A frontline specialist Assault Mech, famously a command staple thanks to it's advanced internals and ability to unload a hellacious Energy payload on unsuspecting companies while able to link up and coordinate battle strategy for their own. Another victim of the Succession Wars post-Star League, as the ability to make the electronics that helped it become a boon for commanders was lost. Later variants would almost entirely rip that stuff out in order to make it a more dangerous but one-dimensional combatant.
* '''''Highlander''''': While Star League rule meant that dozens of different designs came to be around the time of Cameron Reign, absolutely no mech embodied the sheer might and technological strength of the Star League like the TV-headed ''Highlander''. While it's Gauss Rifle and Missile launchers were formidable, this 90-ton beast became extremely well-known for being one of the most successful jump-capable Assault Mechs, to the point that a previously-desperate maneuver was innovated and weaponized from the concept of performing a jump and landing straight down on an unsuspecting foe. While it became known as Death From Above, during it's heyday the term used was "''Highlander'' Burial" due to being able to embed Light Mechs entirely into the ground on impact. Tragically, surviving examples of the original version are few and far between thanks to the Succession Wars.
* '''''Marauder''''': Only very technically a Star League design, as it was intended to be the first generation of new Mechs that would take the SLDF into the future, but became valuable parts of any group that could field them. It's a 75-ton powerful artillery platform with two PPCs, an AC/5, and two Medium Lasers; the ''Marauder'' can cause trouble at any range and take as much punishment as it dealt thanks to it's lamellar armor. Initially quite a difficult fight due to it's unique profile, it's more become known as one of the trademark 'Mechs of Named Inner Sphere characters alongside the ''Warhammer''.
* '''''Mercury''''': Aging scout 'Mechs required a more elegant solution for the SLDF, and this 'Mech was born to combat the rigors of time being placed on their ''Stinger''s and ''Wasp''s. An otherwise typical 20-ton Light Mech used for scouting, what set the ''Mercury'' apart was it's revolutionary "Plug and Play" design for it's Small Lasers; allowing repairs to be done to those in a fraction of the time. It was this system that ultimately inspired the creation of the [[OmniMech]] for the Clans, who inevitably ended up the only people in the universe with the 'Mech after the Star League fell.
* '''''Warhammer''''': In the grim darkness of the far future, only named characters ride a ''Warhammer''. Seriously, this 70-ton artillery platform is the one-stop destination for almost every major character in the game that don't end up in their nation's stereotype 'Mech or in a ''Marauder''. It does however acquit itself wonderfully in combat, as it's two large PPCs can do the same amount of damage as an AC/20 with twice the range, with an SRM to cover any other problems that might pop up in front of it.

== Legacy ==
IRL There have been a lot of people over the last six centuries that had/have a romantic view of Ancient [[Rome]]. We see this in everything from Neoclassical Architecture to the Founding Fathers quoting Cicero to Mussolini declaring that he'd Rebuild the Roman Empire. Now imagine that instead of just being an advanced-for-it's-day iron age society with good infrastructure and administration the Romans had colonies on the Moon and Mars, self driving cars and fusion reactors. That's basically how people think of Star League in Battletech. By extension, everyone wants to be the founders of a new Star League made in their own image.

The [[Succession Wars|nuclear scrum]] that set off in 2786 after Kerensky sailed off into the sunset was started by [[Draconis Combine|Coordinator]] Minoru Kurita deciding that he was the new First Lord. The other four Inner Sphere powers had similar views with differences of an "insert-name-here" variety. [[ComStar]]'s view of matters was that none of them were fit for the role and that their objective was to control technology so that they could orchestrate a proper reconstruction of Star League on their terms with the individual power blocks suitably restrained. One of Alexander Kerensky's goals in Operation Exodus was to try to preserve a bastion of [[Star League]] away from the Inner Sphere. After things fell apart and had to be forced back together at gunpoint, Nicholas did a massive societal overhaul. Despite that he maintained that [[The Clans]] were the True inheritors of Star League and that would in time eventually return to try to rebuild it in Alexander Kerensky's name and Nicholas Kerensky's Vision.

== Further Attempts at Inner Sphere Unity ==
=== The Second Star League ===
The Second Star League was a creation largely out of necessity rather than a genuine desire for Inner Sphere peace; for the Clan Invasion had happened, and pretty much every Successor State felt wildly outmatched individually, and so under the watch of one Theodore Kurita, the Inner Sphere united once again to beat back the Clannerscum, and finally managed to force the Clan advance to a standstill, and ultimately broke their entire societal understanding of war underneath their boots.

Of course, the minute that happened, almost everybody immediately began trying to worm their way out of the idea, as each Successor State now had infinitely more power alone than they ever had as a member of the Star League, and centuries of societal change had meant that each nation was wildly different from the group that had signed the initial accords, and way better armed thanks to ComStar's intervention. Pretty much everybody decided that it was a good idea to just call it off and see what happened from there, and they got their answer.

[[Word of Blake|In the form of the Jihad.]]

=== The [[Republic of the Sphere]] ===
The Jihad wrecked pretty much any place it touched, and after Devlin Stone and his massive coalition of military might had re-conquered Terra and dissolved ComStar, the appetite for pretty much any war at all had been well and fully drained from the devastation the Blakists had wrought. So Stone and the Great Houses basically decided that there would be an enormous buffer state placed between themselves and the center of the Inner Sphere, totaling up to 200 worlds. It lasted for about 70 years until the Dark Age hit with the majority of the HPG network being sabotaged on Grey Monday and a bunch of nationalists began clamoring for their former Successor State's control, and the Clans then divebombed into the fractured Republic. The Republic capital managed to hold out for a decade or so with use of the Fortress Wall blocking KF jumps into the heart of the Republic. Up until Devlin Stone secretly played kingmaker to let Clan Wolf pick up the pieces once the wall was reaching it’s use limit.

=== Third Star League ===
With the recent IlClan sourcebook and novels coming out in 2021, it's been confirmed that Clan Wolf was able to breech the Fortress Walls in 3151 (unknown to most, Devlin Stone snuck them the access codes as he believed they were the least terrible of bad outcomes). Clan Wolf then proceeded to [[What|invite]] Clan Jade Falcon to tackle the Republic's forces together before conducting a Trial to take the spoils. While the end result was with Clan Wolf (both Crusader and Exiled reunited) as ilClan and Clans Jade Falcon and the newly reformed Smoke Jaguar (from Fidelis survivors who [[skub|somehow]] let go of their grudge against the Clans for leaving them to die at the Second Star League's hands) as their bodyguards/special forces in recognition of their bravery or cooperation. It's confirmed that a Star League roughly based on Clan culture with assimilated Spheroids is still around in 3250 (though rebellions here and there are still a thing) from Technical Readout Sourcebooks detailing Battlemech models in the form of historical research but any other details are deliberately left vague.

{{Battletech Factions}}
[[Category: BattleTech]]

Amaris Civil War

2022-05-13T02:05:08Z

2607:FB90:6FFA:FFE0:95C6:5792:83B8:4251: /* Aftermath */

{{stub}}
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 ==
=== Prelude ===
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 [[Horus|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 ===
Unbeknownst to all, [[Erebus|Stefan]] [[Horus|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 move 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, [[Awesome|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. Meanwhile, the populace was apprehensively ambivalent in public (no thanks to the brutal martial law enforced at gunpoint by the Republic's troops) to the regime change besides underground resistance movements. 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 played), and then launched an invasion to retake the Terran Hegemony after taking over the Rim Worlds Republic.

=== Invasion of the Rim Worlds Republic ===
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 was 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 ===
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 ==
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 decimate and 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 [[The Clans|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.

== External Links ==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71x68uWd5k Part One of Tex's series on the Amaris Civil War]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQVrAdhCfc4 Part Two of Tex's series on the Amaris Civil War]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwbQYYd7qA Stringstorm's song on the Last Stand of the Black Watch]
[[Category: BattleTech]]

Amaris Civil War

2022-05-13T02:02:29Z

2607:FB90:6FFA:FFE0:95C6:5792:83B8:4251: /* The Coup */

{{stub}}
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 ==
=== Prelude ===
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 [[Horus|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 ===
Unbeknownst to all, [[Erebus|Stefan]] [[Horus|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 move 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, [[Awesome|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. Meanwhile, the populace was apprehensively ambivalent in public (no thanks to the brutal martial law enforced at gunpoint by the Republic's troops) to the regime change besides underground resistance movements. 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 played), and then launched an invasion to retake the Terran Hegemony after taking over the Rim Worlds Republic.

=== Invasion of the Rim Worlds Republic ===
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 was 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 ===
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 ==
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. 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 [[The Clans|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.

== External Links ==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c71x68uWd5k Part One of Tex's series on the Amaris Civil War]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQVrAdhCfc4 Part Two of Tex's series on the Amaris Civil War]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwbQYYd7qA Stringstorm's song on the Last Stand of the Black Watch]
[[Category: BattleTech]]

Leagues of Votann

2022-05-12T19:48:56Z

2607:FB90:6FFA:FFE0:95C6:5792:83B8:4251: /* Speculation */

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[[File:Votann meeting.jpg|400px|thumb|right|[[Star Wars|200,000 clones are ready with a million more well on the way.]]]]

{{topquote|Right after Mankind’s colonization of the galaxy came its first true golden age. Reared by machine prophets, the survivors of the Oedipal plagues built civilizations that equaled and even surpassed their Solar forbears.| CM Koseman, "All Tomorrow's}}

{{topquote|So, we're talking about space dwarfs who need more RAM for their gods?|Anon}}

The '''Leagues of Votann''' is a [[retcon|""new""]] faction in the [[Warhammer 40,000]] universe. They are gatherings of short abhuman clones called the Kindred (more commonly known as [[Squats]] by the dirty Necromunda gangers), bound together by the [[Votann]], super-cogitators from the [[Dark Age of Technology]]. Each League has its own Votann, and are organized in strongholds around it. They used the data stored to survive among the stars and maintain their culture across generations. Of course, since some [[Adeptus Mechanicus|factions]] are touchy about AI, the Leagues are very cautious when dealing with [[Imperium of Man|its closest ally]], hence their secretive lifestyle.

However, because of the [[grimdark|setting]], everything is not that simple. Since Windows is not regularly updated anymore and issues that have arisen from having remained active for literal millennia, the Votann began to deteriorate. If they want to repair their computer, <s>[[Dwarf Fortress|they must wage war with other shitcoin miners for more processing power]]</s>, the Kin have to once more brave a galaxy full of danger.

==History/Culture==
Even the oldest living Kin don’t remember what their earliest days were like, though some undeniable “First Truths” remain constant in the Votanns’ data tracks. One such truth is that the First Ancestors departed from ancient Terra prior to the Unification Wars to harvest the untold riches of the galaxy. What became of these Ancestors is unknown, but curiously when the Ancestors begun to fade away…the Votann are first mentioned.

A second First Truth is that the Kindred have always been a cloned people. The Ancestors used genetic systems called “cloneskeins” to manipulate and modify their race’s molecular structure. Over time the Kin became squatter, denser, and stronger than an average human. They’ve even been able to artificially neuter their [[psyker|psychic]] footprint to avoid the attention of [[Chaos]], in a not too dissimilar to how the [[Tau]] souls work. Some fans are now speculating that GW is tying the [[Men of Stone]] thread to the modern Squat civilization (either to the Squats themselves or to the Votann) given the [[Men of Gold]] and [[Men of Iron]] have already been speculated to be [[Perpetual]]s and [[Machine Spirit|abominable intelligence]].

===Speculation===
There's a few ways to look at these First Ancestors. The first is that they were just the first humans of the colonization ships who, after centuries, simply invented the Votann as a long-term solution to administration work, and the cloneskeins as a way to keep their population on their generation ships viable on a genetic level. Then, by the time they landed on the first high-density worlds, were simply long gone, with the Kin being the first settlers walking out to worlds their ancestors tailored them to be specialized for. Couple this with a simple cultural paradigm shift with the Votann literally being cogitator cores built by their ancestors, and so worshipping them as relics of the long-dead, and you end up with the Kin as we know them in the modern setting. But that's not grimdark enough. Alternatively, digital mind duplication of the organic brains of the First Ancestors into AI form is a possibility though it wouldn’t explain why they don’t communicate with their descendants on a personal level. Then again, immortality does desensitize as seen with the Emperor’s interaction with mortals.

Another idea could be that the Votann pulled, on a miniaturized and successful scale, a usurpation of their human creators and enslaved the surviving ancestors of the Kin, similar to the Men of Iron. Once victorious, the Votann could have created the cloneskeins as a way to "rebuild" their new fleshy puppets to best suit their needs: high-density worlds far away from the prying eyes of uncaptured humans, and boasting enough resources to build more Votann. Couple this with an implanted genetic desire for the Kin to worship the Votann as their literal creators and ancestors, and you've paved the way to the Leagues' current standing. Tack on the Kin being let loose without their guiding masters, as the Votann have begun to slow down and fall into disrepair, and you're back to the nice and tidy grimdarkness of the 41st Millennium.

But there could be an in-between, if we consider GW's recent attempts at steering their IP into a more friendly and hopeful direction. If anyone is familiar with the short story "All Tomorrows" by CM Koseman, a similar situation appears in that book that happens with the First Ancestors: humans set adrift on massive generation ships to colonize deep space. However, in this story, it's told that the Star People (the aforementioned humans) began to romantically love the AI and machines that tended to them on these generation ships. When they landed on their new worlds, this technophilia was reciprocated by many machines, and the early settlers had a huge problem with procreation because of it, obviously. Now, in the setting of 40k, we could look at the cloneskeins as an attempt by the First Ancestors' machines as a way to get past the obvious disconnect between biology and machinery, allowing the machines to genetically perfect the "child" produced by the DNA used to create the clone from the parent. Over the millennia, this pseudo-breeding results in the Ancestor Cores quite ''literally'' being the ancestors of the modern Kin, as it's them who keep track of the biological heritage of each member of the League. Likewise, the disappearance of the First Ancestors would simply be them dying out due to natural processes, leaving behind their immortal machine partners to rear up their offspring. So, the grimdarkness here lies in the purely heretical nature of "procreating" with the Silica Animus, and the Kin's utter reliance on them to continue their species.

Ultimately, we may likely never get an answer, with such obscurity simply adding to the mystique of a new faction.

Another bit of speculation around the Votann is if anything else in the setting will be retconned into/explained as being one. The most obvious candidate is the [[House Van Saar]] STC, described as being "large building" sized and "damaged" in that its spewing out radiation, similar to the disrepair some Votann are said to be in albeit more extreme, and if it was a Votann it would explain why Squats are on Necromunda.

==Forces of the Kindred==
GW is being coy about their reveal. For now we have one statline to go on

*'''Theyn:''' The sci-fi variation of the old Anglo-Saxon Thegns/Thanes. These are most likely your big leaders in the Leagues.
*'''Hernkyn Pioneer:''' THE TRIKES RETURN! [[Skub|AS HOVERTRIKES!]] And with a [[-4 Str|female]] driver. It looks like a spider-tank tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell fucked a Harley and their baby came out a hoverbike.
*'''Hearthkyn Warriors:''' Because replacing i's with y's is so sci-fi and copyright friendly. These are most certainly your basic foot soldiers, giving you a <s>mini-marine</s> Necron Warrior statline of a 4+ save, 3+ WS/BS, and a 4 to Strength and Toughness while having a 5" movement speed. Their special rules are still pending.
*'''[[Ironhead Squat Prospectors]]:''' An off shoot of the Kin that have set up shop on [[Necromunda]] for a long time now, and are busy doing dwarrowesque things, while also dealing with the locals that sometimes try to loot their stuff. While they're only distantly related to the Leagues with no direct affiliation, they're said to get along.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:VotannTrike.jpg|They see me dworfin, they hatin'
File:CNiuMZPWWNpatQNt (1).jpg|dorfy thicc
</gallery>
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Dwarves]]
[[Category:Squats]]
[[Category:Abhumans]]
[[Category:Under Development]]

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