Star League

Star League
Capital	Terra, Asta, Altair, Fomalhaut, Procyon, Sirius, and Rigil Kentarus
Official Languages	Any human language
Size	The Entire Inner Sphere
Head of State	First Lord
Governmental Structure	Confederation
Military Force	Star League Defense Force

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 it's toll on it's weary populaces, 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 FWL constantly trying to take the planet Andurien, and Cameron having to deal with the fact that Terra and it's nearby planets had been completely drained of resources, and the Hegemony being so small and so non-threatening at the time meant it would've very easily been subsumed by some other group. 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, 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

The Federation if it had balls.

Downfall

While their might was considerable, one thing that had become increasingly clear is that after Ian's death in 2602, the Camerons began a slow but steady decline in impactful leadership. Ian's son Nicholas, who took over the job, was pretty good at his job; helping to develop the HPG network, and expanded the Star League's reach over the Periphery, but after him it was 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 ultimately led to a coup by the madman Stefan Amaris, who gained the First Lord at the time'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 Wars, 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, House Cameron had gone completely extinct, and the 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. So on the half-joke of a colleague, he brought ComStar's Primus Jacob 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 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 did cut back a little ya know. Take a chill bill, give your subjects a tax break and we'll go party on Canopus. Howbout that?" and for the most part, it worked.

But for those occasions when diplomacy failed, Star League had the Star League Defense Force. 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.

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 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 the Battletech. By extension, everyone wants to be the founders of a new Star League made in their own image.

The nuclear scrum that started in 2786 after Kerensky sailed off into the sunset was started by 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 their own image.

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.

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 and a bunch of nationalists began clamoring for their former Successor State's control, and the Clans then divebombed into the fractured Republic.