Word of Blake

The Word of Blake was a religious faction/organization in Battletech that split off from the interstellar communications company ComStar, and has the dubious honor of being the actual bad guys of the notoriously grey vs. grey universe of Battletech, being considered the dark secret, downfall, and demon of one of it's biggest factions.

Seriously, FUCK these guys.

History

The Dark Secret of ComStar

While ComStar was a corporation first and foremost, an aspect of ComStar which few knew about for quite some time was a secret aspect created from before the time of the Succession Wars; It's founder, Jerome Blake, didn't trust the Successor States for a second, and needed to ensure that none of them would try to overtake the HPG network and doom humanity. His protege and number one, Conrad Toyama, felt the same way, and when Blake died and he was named Primus of ComStar, he massively restructured the entire company from a mere corporation into a more esoteric, mystic organization that had genuinely positive ideals at the start; in order to make people take the HPG maintenance and security seriously, they treated it as a holy duty and a holy mission, and that only they had both the know-how and the responsibility to uphold them. After years of ROM agents ensuring that people kept to this doctrine, whether through gentle reminders, threats, or open force, this doctrine began to take on a life of it's own, and previously precepts who were only going along with what they were told began to give way to true believers, who would give their life to protect the HPGs and the information stored there.

Eventually however, this began to mutate into a belief that any technology that was not jealously guarded by ComStar was considered dangerous and liable to end up in the hands of the Great Houses, and so they began furiously gathering up as much Lostech from the Star League era as they could while simultaneously baiting the Great houses into open warfare in a bid to weaken them, so that ComStar could finally come in and save the day, and most notably they began to believe in a prophecy that they would take control of the Inner Sphere during the rebirth of the Star League. And they even actually got their chance to do so during the Clan Invasion! The Star League came back! All they had to do was hold the Clans back on the planet of Tukayyid (that they may or may not have invited the Clans to in the first place)! They were finally going to be able to set the Inner Sphere straight! Intergalactic peace was inevitable!

...Or so they thought.

The Schism

See, the Clans had often only gotten as far as they had because in secret, the Primus at the time was feeding them information, and that didn't sit well with a lot of ComStar's First Circuit, even the religious ones. A majority then opted to place a new Primus in the big chair, one who was more interested in just making money and getting rid of the more religious aspects of themselves. The Religious types, understandably, hated this, and a Preceptor named Demona Aziz decided to split away from ComStar, using the HPG network to rally followers to her more traditional viewpoint of Jerome Blake's work, and convinced Thomas Marik of the Free Worlds League to grant them amnesty in their space.

It is here, from the move to the planet Gibson to the secret dealings with Thomas Marik, that the Word Of Blake was truly formed.

The Brewing Storms

From there, the Word of Blake aggressively transplanted any loyal ComStar Precepts from the League's HPG network, followed by those of the Capellan Confederation. All the while they spent the considerable time and affluence they gained from the HPG network to train soldiers and build resources to begin building for more legitimacy, finally beginning a bold plan to overtake Terra itself, a feat they managed to accomplish thanks to trickery and through a genuine amount of sympathy that had been brewing among the Terran populace at the time. Because Terra was and had been primarily just a figurehead planet for ComStar, it was a major blow to their former comrades, and they wouldn't stop there, going deep into the Chaos Marches, a place well known for their inability to remain conquered, and conquered them.

Finally, the time for the second Star League would come. They would finally do what ComStar didn't. And they would save humanity from itself. And the second Star League even recognized them as a state! Everything was working out!

The Grandest Hissy Fit of them All

See, what the Word of Blake hadn't counted on was that the Second Star League had only ever been born so that they could kick the Clanners into a box in the Inner Sphere, and just as soon as it was established, it was pretty quickly on it's way to fracturing. Further, their decision to incorporate as an official state; the Word of Blake Protectorate, was pretty harshly opposed by Jaime Wolf, the leader of Wolf's Dragoons. This led the Word of Blake into a pretty awkward position; they were only really recognized as an entity by a fracturing Star League that they needed for their prophecy to come true, and if they didn't have that, they weren't going to have a prophecy.

So naturally they did the only reasonable thing they could think of; they threw an enormous tantrum in the form of having WarShips pop up all over major capitals across the Inner Sphere and some places within the Periphery to threaten them into staying with the Star League, and when that didn't work because what the fuck were they going to do, they began a massive orbital bombardment campaign right then and there, deciding if the Star League wouldn't come together willingly, then they would purposefully make their own by way of open force.

The Jihad

The Jihad actually began a little bit before the open decision to just hatefuck the Inner Sphere into submission by the Word of Blake openly declaring war on Wolf's Dragoons, slamming their capital world with nuclear assaults, poisoning the surface for good and setting their longtime rival merc group after them, ending in the deaths of several major Dragoon leaders. After that, the Jihad started over Federated Sun space and then ballooned into a multi-front war in which every major power suddenly found themselves having to face off against an army that often would "white out" the HPG network, and was able to procure or reinforce all of their battalions with far more than their foes were often expecting, usually with a nuclear arsenal attached to the end of it. Even deep into the periphery did the Blakists reach, causing all sorts of unexpected problems for the periphery powers.

It was in effect, utter fucking chaos; almost nobody, including the Clans, had a hard answer for all of the suped up 'Mechs and nuclear devastation being kicked around, as well as plenty of the usual grab-ass and proxy wars that Inner Sphere politics demands in order to stay stable. Certainly nobody could've predicted that the patriarch of a Great House, Thomas Marik, had ended up the Master of the Word of Blake, and that meant they effectively had unlimited money, and even their own in-house mechs. Even the Elementals and Veteran Battle Armor infantry struggled with the Word of Blake's horrific cyborg Manei Domini, who tore through foes with ferociousness and speed. While everyone agreed something needed to be done, the Inner Sphere's politics had all but ensured they'd be a problem for years to come. Someone had to step up and take them out for good. Someone needed to show real, honest leadership against this dauntless foe.

That someone was Devlin Stone.

The End of the Word of Blake

Whoever Devlin Stone was prior to the Jihad, nobody really knows. What is known is that he had ended up in WoB hands on the planet Kittery, as a PoW. While there, he ended up meeting some dork by the name of David Lear, who turned out to be a member of House Liao. They escaped the prison camp and the planet together, and from there, Devlin Stone plotted vengeance for having his world flip-turned-upside-down by the Word. He began to form his coalition using David's nobility as the opening platform, meeting leaders from across the Inner Sphere. He'd get in touch with them, get to know them, usually impress them, and finally began to receive full-throated and actual material support to just fucking end these guys already; culminating in the largest coalition of military forces in human history up to that point; millions strong and all with one purpose; blow up Thomas Marik and reclaim earth. As it turns out, advanced tech isn't exactly going to do a whole lot when the enemy can ram thousands of Assault lances down your throat, and at long last, in 3080, the coalition found and vaporized the Word of Blake headquarters on earth, leading to it's liberation. And just to make sure, he then found Thomas Marik on the planet of Circinus, and ordered the same level of orbital bombardment right down on their heads just like Marik had before.

The Word of Blake as an intergalactic power was dead. And in their place, the Republic of the Sphere was formed.

Sub-Factions

Because the Word of Blake was more of a religious organization rather than a unified front, there were plenty of splinter groups that made keeping track of them a major headache for the major powers.