It may come as a surprise to some. I love the setting of Battletech. I have previously asked what is your favorite Battlemech, I now ask what is your favorite faction.
P.S. if you choose Jade Falcon you will be mocked mercilessly. Fuck clanners, always pay your phone bill.
Favorite WHAT?
Ghost Bear and Comstar are the two I’ve liked the most, although the direction they went with the Rasalhague Dominion never sat right with me.
Used to play on the mekwars legends server a few years ago, but I’m assuming erik’s shut it down since, because I couldn’t find it again when I looked.
And Arcas for favourite all-rounder. Basically an optimized Timberwolf with jump jets.
Wrote a short story based on one of my matches, too. Some dialogue actually from the fight.
Mechwarrior Isaac's eyes flicked over his battlefield displays again, the dim screens washing his enclosed cockpit in a
rainbow of colour and light as status updates blinked and warnings flashed. The enemy was in his sights; a Blakist
Cerberus. Hunched shoulders, guns for arms, emblem of the 50th Shadow Division emblazoned on the shoulder. The sudden
reminder of the scum he was fighting brought a grimace of disgust to Isaac's face. Most Inner Sphere warriors were
dezgra - without honor. Blakists were worse. Even the dishonorable freebirths followed some rules of conflict; lessons
learned from the Succession Wars. Blakists however, outright flouted every convention under the sun. No tactic or
strategy verboten - Nuclear weapons, orbital strikes, nerve gas; total war. Blakists went, and civilian decimation
followed. It sickened Isaac. It had sickened the SLDF 300 years ago, it had sickened Kerensky when he formed the Clans,
and it had sickened the survivors of the internicine Clan warfare in the Kerensky cluster itself. A single underlying
philosophy, honor, had evolved out of that bloody history. To forever avoid the wanton destruction that had nearly
eradicated them during the Exodus.
The only sustainable conflict was honorable conflict. The Freebirths didn't understand. The Blakists understood and spit
on it. They were abominations, and they deserved nothing less than complete eradication.
An amber flash of warning caught Isaac's attention - Star Commander Stephanie Bourjon's Summoner was critical. The
audio/video uplink they shared had already degraded to audio-only, so his 'mech's sensor suite kept an eye zoomed in on
her. The Summoner was a mess, the torso looked like some wild beast had mauled its way in from the outside, the fusion
reactor itself could be seen in her innards, a newly melted hole through the torso had barely missed it, while the left
arm of the mech was completely slagged; not that it had mattered - her 'mechs high-powered autocannon had jammed on its
first shot anyways, forcing an emergency jettison of high-explosive ammo in the middle of the firefight. He could hear
her grunting over the channel as she maneuvered her 'mech around a Blakist assault class, a Ymir. It looked as bad as
the Summoner did, half its torso was outright missing; an ammo explosion, which made its stack of missile launchers far
less menacing, yet smoke still wafted from the barrel of its plasma rifle - it wasn't down yet. The roar of the
Summoner's high-powered jump jets quickly drowned out all other noise Isaac could hear over the channel. Stephanie
already had two kills, and three was coming along shortly.
The Ymir she was engaging was part of the Blakist fire support unit, as was the Cerberus Isaac himself fought.
Originally the engagement had been three on six, with the Blakists fielding superior numbers from the top of a hill. An
equal battle against the Clanners' more sophisticated machines. The Ymir and Cerberus had been linked through an
advanced command and control system that allowed them to share targeting data with their spotters; a pair of heavy-duty
Excalibur battlemechs that Star Captain Kristina Jorgensson and Mechwarrior Isaac had made quick work of - both
'headcapped' - Kristina burrowing a high-explosive 200mm shell into the cockpit of one, while Isaac's target had
seemingly knocked himself out after toppling over from a stray hit. Isaac had simply stopped nearby, lined up a quick
shot of his particle cannon into the cockpit and moved on. Little honor in that, but it was clean, and Blakists were
beneath such concerns anyways.
Kristina however, had not survived that particular spat. The Excaliber had done it's job and provided the necessary
targeting data to the Cerberus Isaac was now fighting, and it had, in turn, launched a Gauss slug straight through
Kristina's Executioner, detonating the reactor and instantly killing her.
Stephanie however, had given the Blakists hell for that, single-handedly taking down two flanking Initiate medium 'mechs
- designed for close range fighting, while fighting off the Ymir at the same time. She was running interference so Isaac
could focus on the Blakist fire support. Stephanie's heavy Summoner 'mech, without it's Ultra-class autocannon, should
have been quickly cut down at this engagement range with the Initiates - something her 'mech wasn't fast enough to
dictate, yet somehow she had pulled through, engaging her jump jets to avoid one Initiate while laying into the other
with the ultraviolet glow of her large laser and flash of her STREAK missile system. Moving forward to kick the leg out
from one before jetting away and melting the armor of the other. Watching her fight in a Summoner was like watching a 70
ton muscled gymnast at work. Isaac had never seen anyone so nimble with a Summoner before.
A targeting alarm brought Isaac's attention back to his opponent. He had put some distance between himself and the
Cerberus, and without its spotter it had a great deal of difficulty putting its Gauss Rifle and ERPPC on the mark. Isaac
on the other hand, had no such difficulties - He had the iniative and a maneuverability advantage. His Arcas, a heavy
fire support 'mech, was designed for this kind of fighting. Long range ERPPC's launching man-made lightning across the
open ground while he engaged his jump jets and dashed between cover on a broken hill. The alarm toned as Isaac saw the
Cerberus raise an arm from behind the sandblasted rock it was using as cover. He quickly juked his Arcas down behind a
rocky outcropping as the Cerberus fired another PPC blast, the air crackling as the bolt of charged particles lanced
past. Isaac made note: The Cerberus pilot had stopped firing his Gauss. Low on ammo, or out. Patience paid off. Time to
move in for the kill.
A sudden scream of rage over the audio channel brought Isaac's attention back to Stephanie. She was doing something his
instructors in the Sibko would have called stupid. Heroic. Glorious. But stupid. Forgoing the use of her weapons, which
apparently were not having the effect she had intended on the Ymir, Stephanie had brought her Summoner in a parabolic
arc, her jump jets boosting the 70 ton Summoner at over a hundred kilometers per hour. They had a nickname for this
maneuver, 'DFA - death from above'. It was always discouraged: The attack was highly telegraphed, easy to avoid and turn
your guns on the crashing mech when it missed and collided with the ground.
Stephanie was a much better 'mech pilot than your average Clanner fresh out of the Sibko, however. She was a Star
Commander. Riding a plume of superheated gas her Summoner pulverized the Ymir as it's full mass and momentum came down
on the upper torso, one knee smashing through the trunk of the Ymir and into the cockpit as the pair of mechs careened,
crashing and tumbling to the ground in a scream of metal, myomer fiber and fusion-heated rocket exhaust.
Isaac could spare no more time to watch. She was dead, or she wasn't. At least the Ymir wasn't getting back up. That
left him to finish off the Cerberus. Jets roared as his Arcas jumped to another outcropping, 'mech silhouetted against
the clear blue sky, he lined up his ERPPC's and fired, the fool of a Blakist wasn't even trying to move. One bolt missed
its mark, the other struck the hip joint of the Cerberus, a bright blue flash practically blowing half of it out, molten
armor and burning myomer splattering the nearby rockside like deadly shrapnel. The Cerberus buckled over to one side,
the pilot somehow managing to keep the mech upright as the hipjoint failed and the upper leg actuator snapped. The air
shimmered around Isaac's Arcas as it softly landed, radiating waste heat from the pair of ERPPC's, the high noon sun and
desert terrain not helping matters; more than a few times in this engagement Isaac had spiked his reactor output to
levels that pushed the safety limits.
Another jump, and he'd practically be on top of the Cerberus, at a range where he could use his pair of medium pulse
lasers. As Isaac prepared for the next hop forward, a woman's voice cracked a command over his audio channel.
"Isaac, hold."
So Stephanie was still alive. Isaac was flushed with relief, before a momentary flash of irritation crossed his face.
She wasn't going to take his kill, was she? He knew better than to argue it and spoke only, "Aff, lead."
Another radio in Isaac's cockpit, tuned to an open channel, suddenly came to life.
"This is Star Commander Stephanie Bourjon, 3rd Star of the Silveroot Keshik, Alpha Galaxy of Clan Ghost Bear. To the
Blakist piloting the Cerberus I offer Zellbrigen: The Summoner or the Arcas, which of us do you take first?". She
sounded gloating, even a little arrogant.
Isaac was apalled. Zellbrigen was ritual combat the Clans had quickly discarded during their initial invasion because
the dezgra Freebirths never followed it, despite prior agreement - often breaking the rules of engagement as soon as it
was advantageous to them. It was an honor no Blakist deserved: Whoever the Blakist picked, the other Clan warrior would
sit back and observe, not interfering until combat was done. Stephanie's Summoner was in absolutely no shape to carry on
a fight; the Cerberus itself was well-armed and well armoured, probably not moving anywhere soon, but it wasn't going
down to her Summoner. In a sense, Stephanie *was* taking his kill; if she could manage it. Only a fool would choose
Isaac and his Arcas when a few quick shots would put Stephanie or her Summoner down for good.
Three kills in ten minutes, and she wanted to make it four in fifteen. Cocky. Isaac grinned in spite of himself. If
Stephanie lived, she was almost certainly getting a promotion.
The answer that came back however, surprised him.
"Fuck You."
It was a race then. A grin plastered on Isaac's face as he gunned his jump jets, an eye on Stephanie's Summoner as she
limped it across the barren open ground, surprisingly graceful for a mech that had the piss taken out of it twice over.
'For a Blakist, this one wasn't so bad.' Isaac thought.
I do like the idea of a nice cottage or something, but I don’t think any cottage has a gigabit ethernet. It’s hard times for a competitively viable cottage core lesbian lifestyle.
House House of The Deep Periphery.
Oh you like houses? name every house.
Steiner, Liao, Marik, Davion and Kurtia
There’s way more then that, Pavlov’s and semi detached houses are the first two i thought of
TRUE.
