Editing Succession Wars (section)

=== Fourth Succession War ===

The Fourth Succession War was one of the largest and most desperate conflicts of the entire saga; as both Commonwealth and Federated Sun borders did not actively touch, and they knew that in order to fully consummate this relationship, they would have to bridge the gap between the two states, which bordered the other three empires. Done on the wedding day of Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner, both sides had found critical weaknesses in their foes and had begun piledriving their way into connecting both states on the galactic map. As the reception began to wrap up, Hanse Davion said one of the most quoted lines in the Inner sphere: "to you my bride, I give you...the Capellan Confederation."

Naturally, all not-FedComm sides began to panic big time, and each had their own front to deal with; the Capellans were ruled by yet another nutcase of a Liao, and Hanse Davion anticipated a major structural weakness in their defense strategy in that it was ready for third succession war style conflict, and not massive invasions, something he used to great effect to ultimately cripple Capellan industry for decades. The Combine was getting hit on both sides, both by Lyran Assault Mechs and also by their hated rivals, Wolf's Dragoons, who only needed a modest excuse of cash to go fight Kurita forces. With specific regards to the Wolf’s Dragoons, their commander held a grudge for the DCMS attempting to forcibly conscript and integrate the Dragoons into their military. To add more salt to the wound, he was forced to kill his Kuritan friend who was their liaison and commander of a Combine unit they were training. The grudge was bad enough that Commander Wolf publicly berated Coordinator Takeshi Kurita for squandering such honorable soldiers and enraged him in the war to the point the coordinator enacted his infamous “Death to all [[Mercenaries (Battletech)|Merc’s]]” edict to [[Rip and Tear|slaughter]] [[grimdark|all]] hired guns in sight. The Dragoons served as a provocative lighting rod on the Davion-Kuritan border and were bloodied but enabled FedCom units to avoid the worst of the meat-grinder there. The Free Worlds League was simply in the way, and currently dealing with the after effects of facing ComStar, and found themselves having to deal with a massive rebellion in the form of the Tikhonov Free Republic. Finally, there was ComStar. 

ComStar was happy that little banana republics were popping up all over the Inner Sphere at the time, but were not happy that now there was a serious chance that there could be a Star League replacement all through the Inner Sphere's idea of politics, and quickly set about attempting to face the Davions and Steiners in the use of Communications inderdiction, but quickly found themselves in a much more dangerous game than they'd previously faced; Hanse Davion wasn't some prissy noble. He was smart, and more over he was more than aware that ComStar was behind what was quickly becoming a somewhat poorly organized military. His solution to the major "blackouts" that were happening across the HPG network were something he called "Black Boxes", which were like fax machines but could do HPG level communications, just extremely slowly. Finally, they found that the best idea to try and halt the FedSun advance was to try and dress up as the Capellan Death Commandos and try to raid the New Avalon Institute of Science, which ended quite harshly at the hands of Hanse himself, taking the field in his personal ''BattleMaster''. Further, use of his spy network in MIIO had revealed that the Death Commandos were nowhere near his own space at the time, revealing ComStar's deception. While they were able to negotiate the HPG network back online, ComStar was now very wary of the FedComm, and ultimately found itself in a years long shadow war against them.

The War ended in a resounding Federated Commonwealth (as the now super-state called itself) victory. The Combine had lost world after world, the Capellans had their military might spanked into uselessness, the Combine had been severely weakened by their own warfare being used against them, and several of the little republics popping up over the Inner Sphere either absorbed themselves into the FedComm, or allied themselves with them. Hanse had gotten pretty much everything he'd ever wanted.

==== Gray Death Legion saves the entire Inner Sphere ====
All while this was going on, the technological levels of the Inner Sphere were still dropping preciptiously, and probably would've done so into perpetuity if the Free Worlds League hadn't offered a contract to a specific Mercenary company: The Gray Death Legion.

The GDL had been started by some Owen Wilson-looking ass merc named Grayson Death Carlyle; a military genius who had built his company through revolutionary use of Light Mech tactics and strong strategy. They were given a tough mission by the FWL to just consistently harass House Liao, and they did so admirably, culminating in the spirited capture of the planet Sirius V. This capture got them rewarded with the planet Helm, an otherwise unnotable temperate planet that'd been kinda going downhill since the Star League's collapse. What they didn't know was that Helm was a one in a million planet; a place where the Star League had stored a priceless information cache; a memory core, deep within the planet. Thousands of things that'd become [[LosTech]] sat in a single vault somewhere in the extensive cave systems underneath the planet. A precentor of ComStar had found this out, and began blaming the Death Legion for atrocities of the highest order, convincing the Free Worlds League to attack Helm at full-bore. While defending their holdings, they and a Combine noble by the name of Hassid Nicol came to the conclusion of the Memory Core's existence, and struck an easy alliance to quickly find the Core. It was a fierce fight, but ultimately Nicol and the Grey Death Legion were able to get a copy of the Memory Core and some of the goodies left therein before House Marik and ComStar blew the place sky high, killing the mad Precentor in the process. After they were cleared of all charges laid against them, the Legion spread the information in the core like wildfire, knowing now that ComStar would do anything to keep it from being spread further. 

In essence, Gray Death Legion saved the Inner Sphere from not only ComStar, but itself.