Editing Succession Wars (section)

=== Third Succession War ===

In contrast to the first two wars, the Third Succession War was extremely low intensity due to the relative depletion of technology, and most sides were honestly trying to stay out of it; with the FWL and the Lyran Commonwealth trying their best to rebuild after getting some of the worst of the fighting over the course of the previous war. However, the crown of First Lord was still too good to pass up, and once again ComStar egged the Draconis Combine with planted information into open war yet again. You'd think their intelligence service would be able to notice that this was becoming a recurring theme, but nope, off to fight again.

The battles of the third succession war ultimately became much more individualized affairs, particularly between their Mechwarriors, who at this point were like landed knights due to knowing how to use these titans of metal and steel. Further, the slide into a neo-feudalist society for each Great House had ultimately ensured that a new kind of warfare, known as "The Honours of War", which developed from the old Ares Conventions. War now was over production facilities and fought in large individual stages with plenty of time to drag people back from the battlefield and start over. While it still meant loss of life was prevalent, it ultimately kept battles into the mere thousands instead of millions dead over time.

The war ended in another call for peace, but this time in a much more drastic way than had been done previously. Lyran Archon Katrina Steiner proposed to the entire Inner Sphere peace accords to be signed and sealed in 3020, with only Hanse Davion of the Federated Suns willing to come to the table. Everyone else thought it was just talk like all the other times it'd happened beforehand, but were horrified to learn that not only had both sides come to the table in earnest, but had actively found themselves seeing more eye to eye than previously thought, drafting the Federated Commonwealth Alliance Document, which went into effect in 3022. Every other power was horrified by this, as it meant that two of the largest powers in the Inner Sphere were now well on their way to being one enormous superpower in the way that none of the others could possibly handle, and the other three powers hastily signed a mutual defense pact with each other, quickly ending the war in a stalemate as the rest of the Inner Sphere now watched hesitantly and waited against the FedComm's aims.