Word of Blake

It never ends well for Blakes in space.

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 edict 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 with each other 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 Precentor 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. From there, the Word of Blake aggressively transplanted any loyal ComStar Precentors 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 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 the Inner Sphere could stop the Clanners from invading further into their space, and just as soon as it was established, it was pretty quickly on its 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. And if they didn't have that, well... the Wolf's Dragoons probably would be given free reign to put them down.

So naturally, they did the only reasonable thing they could think of; they threw an interstellar 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 the 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 there couldn't be another Star League to bring them in line, and ultimately 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 as far as we know

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 Blakists. 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 Terra. 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 Terra, leading to its 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 done to thousands of worlds before.

The Word of Blake as an intergalactic power was dead. And in their place, the Republic of the Sphere was formed. However, with the advent of Grey Monday, with the Inner Sphere’s HPG network being sabotaged with bombings and viruses from units bearing unidentified insignia, it’s been rumored that some parts of their organization survived in deep cover before sabotaging the comms infrastructure.

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; since it meant the Blakists could go from normalish people to crazed zealots within a year depending on who would take charge of the local cell.

• Toyamas: The most openly radical and zealotous group, eventually drowning out all others or even assaulting them for HERESY. Pretty much all the bad shit the Word of Blake did was done by these maniacs.
• Counter-Reformists: While often just as religious as Toyamas, the Counter-Reformists often merely preferred the religious doctrine of the WoB re-written so that it was no longer as "corrupted" as it had been. Understandably, this did not win them many fans among their own.
• True Believers: The bizarre reasonable faction of the Word of Blake, trying to be the middle man between all the other ones. While they didn't start any shit, they definitely didn't take any either, and any attempted betrayals or power plays often ended violently and almost never in the favor of the not-True Believers. They figured there were too many fractured parts of the WoB and that uniting under one vision was a better idea in the long run.
• Expatriates: A bunch of ComStar officers who felt betrayed by Comstars reforms, and joined the Word of Blake as a result. Often sided with the True Believers, but then got blown the fuck out once many of their highest ranking leaders were revealed to just be ComStar agents.
• Shunners: The doomsday preppers/cult. They figured the Jihad was the beginning of the end of human civilization in the Inner Sphere, and so they felt now was time to hole up and wait it out in a refuge on Venus, which then had most of them get incinerated when another faction (probably the Toyamas) decided they needed to go and sabotaged the refuge's atmosphere controls.

Military

The Word of Blake typically built their armies like they used to in ComGuard, with a base-six combined-arms force designed to put more attention on infantry so that the Battlemech in question could draw fire, though how they actually fought differed considerably. In battle, the Word of Blake's general goal was to lure opponents in by "greying out" the HPG network, and then surprise them with greater-than-expected numbers, nuclear weapons, or both. Indeed, when the Word of Blake wasn't engaging in guerilla wars at the infantry level, they were often known to dump dropship after dropship of Star League era designs or entirely unheard of mechs, power armor, and tank on the unsuspecting heads of their enemies.

Tough, heavily armed, cybernetically enhanced. Certain people are creaming their red robes.

They combined this particularly fun tactic with the work from their Shadow Divisions, which were almost always made up of the Manei Domini. Originally created as a weapon to defend the Word of Blake and their vision of the Star League in a hypothetical genocidal war against the Clans, they come in a diverse range of specialties from disguised infiltrators with advanced sensors to walking cyborg tanks that can tear Clan Elementals apart in melee. As cybernetically enhanced warriors, they were fanatically loyal, exceptionally brutal and usually kept in reserve until it their opponent had no way out, in which their maniac army of crazed cyborg men tore opposing armies to shreds. And that was if they won, they were the ones who were often charged with wiping a planet clean of life using biological weapons, nukes, and chemical agents as well as orbital bombardments if things weren't going their way.

The Celestial Series, and other Notable Mechs

While they had plenty of special 'Mech variants, by far the most notable of the Blakist BattleMechs were the Celestial Series; an unholy amalgam of OmniMech versatility and Inner Sphere engine and armor technology, ranging the entire weight class system from Light to Assault. While all of them received a different weapon suite depending on their weight class, all of them received improved sensors, and an Extendable Blade as a personal calling card from the Blakists and as a coup de grace/last ditch effort close combat weapon. Of particular note is the Improved C3 system all Celestials carry, making a WoB Level II far more dangerous than the sum of its parts might suggest.

• Malak - The lightest of the series, designed as a long range scout. Most unnecessary weight was pulled out of it to allow it to carry a dizzying array of weapons; a Light PPC, an ER Medium Laser, an SRM-2, and a Flamer as a starting point.
• Preta - The Celestial Medium Mech, designed for close-combat and close combat alone. It packed a light PPC and a Snub-nose PPC as its starting weapons, with an anti-missile defense system installed to keep it from getting picked off. Almost all variants either played up it's mobility or it's short-range damage output.
• Grigori - The Grigori is the first Heavy 'Mech in the Celestial series, with an emphasis on being a missile platform. While it carried out that particular job admirably, it had the unfortunate build decision of cramming all of its ammo into the right-side torso, meaning that even if it was protected by the CASE system, getting through it meant the Grigori was going to create a pretty impressive crater.
• Deva - The other Heavy Mech in the Celestial Series, slightly larger than the Grigori. It boasted direct-fire support capabilities, packing a gauss rifle as well as three Light-PPCs, though it ran out of ammo fairly quickly, and the Retractable Blade was honestly a bit of a confusing choice on a mech that was almost never going to see close-combat action.
• Seraph - The Celestial Series "light" Assault Mech, designed as a hit and run specialist, but ultimately failed to do so given that its Myomer was intended to give it a speed boost when it overheated, but its (admittedly impressive) weaponry, starting with an Ultra AC/10, SRM-6, and Snub-Nose PPC were never going to get it hot enough to do that, and so it's a bit slower than other Assault Mechs. That does not however, mean that you should be anywhere near it.
• Archangel - The Celestial signature Assault Mech, topping out at 100 tons. It was built as the bedrock on which many Word of Blake forces would operate, and given the sheer amount of firepower and armor it could bring to the table; starting with a Heavy PPC and a Plasma Rifle, it more than lived up to its billing. On the surface somewhat undergunned, a combination of compact engine, gyro and the small cockpit common to all Celestials make this one of the most dreaded "zombie" mechs in the game. A targeting computer makes its noticeably limited armament far more dangerous, not to mention the Angel ECM suite. Oh, and it also had Jump Jets, meaning it was fully capable of chasing your ass down if it came to it.
• Omega - An unholy lovechild between King Crab and the Stone Rhino, Omega is the first truly functional Superheavy/Colossal combat mech of 150 tons. Most of that extra tonnage went to armor and CASE II in each weapon, making this mech an extremely tough nut to crack, even if it comes at the cost of it being a slightly mobile pillbox. By comparison the weapons themselves are probably the least impressive thing about it, even if no one would scoff at three torso-mounted Gauss Rifles and LB 10-X Autocannons in each hand, all supported by the C3i computers. With obvious weaknesses in bigger, more target-able profile and an agility of a turtle, this big boy was never deployed without extensive support. Technically, it never left the prototype phase, and of the ~30 Omegas built, only one is known to have survived the Jihad and the Blakists' obliteration and serves as an attraction/gladiator in Solaris VII.