History NightmareFuel / BattleTech

[[folder: [=ComStar=]]]

[[folder: The Periphery]]

[[folder: The Jihad]]

[[folder: Wars of Reaving]]

[[folder: Dark Age]]

[[folder: ilClan]]

[[folder: Myths and Legends]]

[[folder: Miscellaneous]]

* The Battle of Ingelsmond, which too place between 2787-2789 in the First Succession War. A rich former Terran Hegemony world, Ingelsmond was besieged by the Draconis Combine, who sought to take the planet for its own. Not wanting to join the Combine, Ingelsmond sent out missives to the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, offering to willingly join either if they would repulse the Dragon. Neither realm could muster the strength needed to liberate it, but both saw the value in denying it to House Kurita, and promptly launched raids to destroy Ingelsmond's infrastructure using nuclear weapons. The people of Ingelsmond could only watch in horror as the people they had asked to liberate them instead arrived to nuke their planet, and House Kurita responded in kind by unleashing their own nuclear stockpile on both [=FedSuns=], Lyrans, and Ingelsmond itself. ''Eleven gigatons'' worth of nuclear weapons were unleashed upon the planet[[note]]as of 2020, most [=ICBMs=] used by modern-day nuclear powers carry warheads in the 100 kiloton - 1 megaton range, meaning a significant fraction of ''Earth's entire nuclear arsenal'' was used on Ingelsmond in the course of less than a year[[/note]], reducing a pre-war population of over 4.2 billion humans to around a million. Some survivors managed to rebuild a fragile civilization until 2803, when they were rediscovered by House Kurita and promptly nuked back into oblivion. By 2822, [=ComStar=] had declared the world "uninhabited" and had taken it off the starmaps entirely. It says something about the Succession Wars that the Battle of Ingelsmond, unlike the Kentares Massacre, is neither remembered, nor considered unusual or excessive in the climate of the early Succession Wars.

* The 2787-2789 Battle of Ingelsmond in the First Succession War. A rich former Terran Hegemony world, Ingelsmond was besieged by the Draconis Combine, who sought to take the planet for its own. Not wanting to join the Combine, Ingelsmond sent out missives to the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, offering to willingly join either if they would repulse the Dragon. Neither realm could muster the strength needed to liberate it, but both saw the value in denying it to House Kurita, and promptly launched raids to destroy Ingelsmond's infrastructure using nuclear weapons. The people of Ingelsmond could only watch in horror as the people they had asked to liberate them instead arrived to nuke their planet, and House Kurita responded in kind by unleashing their own nuclear stockpile on both [=FedSuns=], Lyrans, and Ingelsmond itself. ''Eleven gigatons'' worth of nuclear weapons were unleashed upon the planet[[note]]the biggest nuclear weapon ever built on Earth, the "Tsar Bomba", had an explosive force of fifty megatons. In other words, Ingelsmond was bombed with the equivalent of over 200 of them.[[/note]], reducing a pre-war population of over 4.2 billion humans to around a million. The survivors, hiding in the planet's tropical zone, managed to rebuild a fragile civilization until 2803, when they were rediscovered by House Kurita and promptly nuked into oblivion. In 2822, [=ComStar=] to declared the world "uninhabited".

* In terms of sheer destruction, the Succession Wars were more devastating to humanity than all other wars fought by humanity, combined, both up to that point and further on in the timeline. To put it in perspective, the Reunification War, which devastated the Periphery, killed approximately 100 million people in the Periphery realms through direct attacks on civilians, starvation, and destruction of homes and infrastructure. The Amaris Civil War killed roughly 150 million people, most of them civilians in the the Terran Hegemony, through the same means. By the standards of the First Succession War alone, those death tolls would be considered ''rounding errors''. While it is impossible to tell the exact death toll, entire planets of billions were left all but depopulated, and estimates by adding them all together get as high as ''1 trillion'' human lives lost.

* The 2787-2789 Battle of Ingelsmond in the First Succession War. A rich former Terran Hegemony world, Ingelsmond was besieged by the Draconis Combine, who sought to take the planet for its own. Not wanting to join the Combine, Ingelsmund sent out missives to the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, offering to willingly join either if they would repulse the Dragon. Neither realm could muster the strength needed to liberate it, but both saw the value in denying it to House Kurita, and promptly launched raids to destroy Ingelsmund's infrastructure using nuclear weapons. The people of Ingelsmond could only watch in horror as the people they had asked to liberate them instead arrived to nuke their planet, and House Kurita responded in kind by unleashing their own nuclear stockpile on both [=FedSuns=], Lyrans, and Ingelsmond itself. ''Eleven gigatons'' worth of nuclear weapons were unleashed upon the planet[[note]]the biggest nuclear weapon ever built on Earth, the "Tsar Bomba", had an explosive force of fifty megatons. In other words, Ingelsmond was bombed with the equivalent of over 200 of them.[[/note]], reducing a pre-war population of over 4.2 billion humans to around a million. The survivors, hiding in the planet's tropical zone, managed to rebuild a fragile civilization until 2803, when they were rediscovered by House Kurita and promptly nuked into oblivion. In 2822, [=ComStar=] to declared the world "uninhabited".

** During Operation Klondike, Clan Smoke Jaguar's fondness for [[RapePillageAndBurn torturing and raping]] the locals caught up to them when the city of Kaliningrad took up arms against them after an unspecified "incident" involving a Jaguar warrior. Franklin Osis declared the ''entire city'' to be "enemy combatants" and [[MoralEventHorizon razed every last building]] to the ground, [[KickTheDog refusing to help]] the now homeless survivors. His only comment on the matter was [[NeverMyFault "They should have surrendered after the first lesson."]] While ilKhan Kerensky was [[EveryoneHasStandards understandably furious,]] Osis has become such a monster from his Clan's trademark bloodlust that he went as far as to nickname them [[RedBaron "the Destroyers of Kaliningrand."]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[DeathFromAbove Death from above.]]]]

* In 2825, a unit of [=BattleMechs=] painted in SLDF colors, bearing a mysterious emblem depicting the state of Minnesota and the number "331", invaded the Draconis Combine from out of the Deep Periphery, freeing political prisoners and looting resources. All while refusing any attempts at capture or communication before fleeing into unknown space, never to be heard from again. Even in the ilClan era of 3151, despite centuries worth of research and investigation, not a single person is aware of whatever happened to the so-called "Minnesota Tribe."

* In the closing years of the Jihad, Thomas Marik was naturally considered public enemy number one to the ''entire human race.'' So hated was he that his death was worth those of ''millions of innocent people.'' Just ask the People of Regulus who nuked every single ''planet'' that the Master fled to. Until the Circinus Federation, being the [[TooDumbToLive absolute geniuses]] that they were, decided to shelter him. Now that Marik had nowhere else to run, they sterilized the planet with cobalt-laced nuclear weapons from orbit, ensuring that absolutely '''[[SaltTheEarth nothing]]''' would grow there ever again. Not even ''microbial'' life.

** The Terran Hegemony's first [=BattleMech=] engagement with House Kurita had a lance - four ''Mackies'' - [[CurbstompBattle utterly trounce]] a DCMS tank company. The Hegemony forces left some survivors ''just so they would spread the word of what happened''. The result was that ALL of the power in the Inner Sphere raced to steal the design of the ''Mackie'' and spark a LensmanArmsRace in a panic.

** Even the mech's appearance is...wrong on some subtle, fundamental level. Its lines are too smooth, it looks much larger in darkness and it lacks any serial number, manufacturer's mark or any other sign of identification.

* The simple fact that all of the horrific, violent and outright genocidal acts committed by the villains of the setting have been done without any kind of evil, supernatural force to motivate them. Only purely ''human'' reasons like greed, hubris, desperation, nationalist fervor, religious fanaticism, prejudice, bloodlust, political extremism and outright insanity, all carried out on a galactic scale. And as real-life history can attest, [[RealismInducedHorror humans are more than capable of carrying out unspeakable acts of death and destruction for the most irrational and trivial of reasons.]] Despite the opening line of this page, ''[=BattleTech=]'' may truly be even ''darker'' than ''Warhammer 40K''- there are no warlike aliens or evil psychic gods of the hell-realms beyond normal space to blame for the endless slaughter. [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters Only us.]]

* After their threats to force the Successor States to reform the Star League went unheeded, the Word of Blake went absolutely ''apeshit'' and launched a two-front campaign against literally ''every other faction.'' Half of their assault came in the form of a massive information warfare campaign to turn every faction against another in a series of false flags and "whiting out" all communication. The other half? [[{{OmnicidalManiac}} Attacking every capital and industrial center]] they could reach with WMDs. Nuclear. Chemical. And biological.

* Shock artist and playwright Belazs Nagy was no stranger to controversial forms of self-expression, most notably his 3042 opus, ''The Rape of Capella'', which juxtaposed war crime footage with survivor interviews to paint a lurid portrait of the Federated Suns' rampant militarism. While he had long held a reputation for protesting just about everything the Davions said, did or even wore, it was the opening night of his 3072 play about the Inner Sphere's role in the Jihad, ''Our Holy Mission'', that finally proved to be his undoing. Already infuriated by the play's sympathetic portrayal of the Word of Blake, the audience finally snapped when Nagy himself ended the play with what was heavily implied to be [[TheAristocrats an Aristocrats joke]] at the Davion family's expense, breaking out into a riot that ended with playwright being hanged from a lamppost outside the theater.

* The Kentares Massacre of 2796, "the single largest war crime in human history". After House Kurita troops landed on and captured Kentares IV, some stay-behind Davion troops were still operating, including a Davion sniper who took a shot at what he thought was a high-ranking Kurita officer who had decided to take a walk outside his ''Battlemaster''. His shot killed the officer, who turned out to be high-ranking, all right. He was Minoru Kurita, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. The problem was, [[CoolOldGuy 93-year-old Minoru]] was the only thing standing between his insane son, Jinjiro, and the rulership of the Combine. Almost as soon as Jinjiro heard the news, he replied with a three-word command: "Kill them all." A general who dared to ask for clarification on what "them" meant was summarily executed on the spot. From that point on, it was clear: Kentares IV must die. At first the massacres were organized with firing squads, but Jinjiro (who [[ForTheEvulz had relocated to the planet so he could personally witness the executions for fun]]) decided that the killings weren't painful and sadistic enough and so he demanded that the troops start using katanas. In the span of 152 days, over 90 percent of the planet's population were killed, over ''fifty-two million people'' in total, a single-incident death toll that would manage to stand as a grim record even through the horror days of the Jihad. The scope and brutality of the murders were so horrific, that [=DCMS=] troops began to revolt, some sheltering Kentarans, other even leaking footage of the murders to the wider Sphere. Some of them were [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone so traumatised by the atrocities that they'd been made to commit]] [[DrivenToSuicide that they committed seppuku]].

* The simple fact that all of the horrific, violent and outright genocidal acts committed by the villains of the setting have been done without any kind of evil, supernatural force to motivate them. Only purely ''human'' reasons like greed, hubris, desperation, nationalist fervor, religious fanaticism, prejudice, bloodlust, political extremism and outright insanity, all carried out on a galactic scale. And as real-life history can attest, [[RealismInducedHorror humans are more than capable of carrying out unspeakable acts of death and destruction for the most irrational and trivial of reasons.]]

* The Kentares Massacre of 2796. After House Kurita troops landed on and captured Kentares IV, some stay-behind Davion troops were still operating, including a Davion sniper who took a shot at what he thought was a high-ranking Kurita officer who had decided to take a walk outside his ''Battlemaster''. His shot killed the officer, who turned out to be high-ranking, all right. He was Minoru Kurita, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine. The problem was, [[CoolOldGuy 93-year-old Minoru]] was the only thing standing between his insane son, Jinjiro, and the rulership of the Combine. Almost as soon as Jinjiro heard the news, he replied with a three-word command: "Kill them all." A general who dared to ask for clarification on what "them" meant was summarily executed on the spot. From that point on, it was clear: Kentares IV must die. At first the massacres were organized with firing squads, but Jinjiro (who [[ForTheEvulz had relocated to the planet so he could personally witness the executions for fun]]) decided that the killings weren't painful and sadistic enough and so he demanded that the troops start using katanas. In the span of 152 days, over 90 percent of the planet's population were killed, a single-incident death toll that would manage to stand as a grim record even through the horror days of the Jihad. The scope and brutality of the murders were so horrific, that [=DCMS=] troops began to revolt, some sheltering Kentarans, other even leaking footage of the murders to the wider Sphere.

* Ever wondered why war became a way of life in the Battletech universe? And why it became such a [[CrapsackWorld crapsack universe]] in the first place? Blame Stefan Amaris, whose long-planned coup d'etat officially began after he murdered Richard Cameron and renamed the Star League as the "Amaris Empire," ordering the [[KillEmAll execution]] of every man, woman and child with even a ''drop'' of Cameron blood in them, imprisoning his political rivals in internment camps and committing widescale [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking voter fraud.]] Everything that followed, from the centuries of war that nearly drove humanity back to the Stone Age, to the SLDF's self-exile out of disgust for the behavior of the successor states that would lead to the formation of the Clans, to the Periphery becoming a lawless backwater, to Jerome Blake's establishment of Comstar in an effort to preserve mankind's knowledge in spite of the bloodshed, to the Jihad that would come from Blake's most fanatical believers, is all '''Stefan's fault.'''

** During Operation Klondike, Clan Smoke Jaguar's fondness for [[RapePillageAndBurn torturing and raping]] the locals caught up to them when the city of Kaliningrad took up arms against them after an unspecified "incident" involving a Jaguar warrior. Franklin Osis declared the ''[[KillEmAll entire city]]'' to be "enemy combatants" and [[MoralEventHorizon razed every last building]] to the ground, [[KickTheDog refusing to help]] the now homeless survivors. His only comment on the matter was [[NeverMyFault "They should have surrendered after the first lesson."]] While ilKhan Kerensky was [[EveryoneHasStandards understandably furious,]] Osis has become such a monster from his Clan's trademark bloodlust that he went as far as to nickname them [[RedBaron "the Destroyers of Kaliningrand."]]

* The [[TheOnlyWayToBeSure cataclysmic end]] of Clan Blood Spirit was the grand finale to the Wars of Reaving. Star Adder, having emerged as the most powerful of the Homeworld Clans, would enact a global campaign of [[KillEmAll genocide]] against their most hated enemy. Every asset of the Blood Spirit was ''destroyed.'' Every Blood Chapel, every planet, every city, every mech, every ship and every man, woman and child: ''utterly annihilated.''

** Malvina Hazen herself is a one-person horror show. In her childhood, she [[EnfantTerrible murdered two members of her Sibko]] to make sure there was enough [[EvilIsPetty food to go around]], treated her adopted daughter Cynthy (who was orphaned by the very Mongol Doctrine she espoused) like a [[WouldHurtAChild pet at best and a punching bag at worst,]] and essentially dedicated her life to [[KillEmAll slaughtering everything that stood in the way of her ambitions.]] She was finally undone after being brutally stabbed by one of the people closest to her: [[TheDogBitesBack Cynthy.]]

* The Genecaste are the collective MadWomanInTheAttic of Clan society. Rarely spoken aloud or in company, the Genecaste are those who took the Clans' transhumanist ideology a little ''too'' far. Living in [[HiddenElfVillage isolated communes]] for fear of extermination, the Genecaste are able to survive in low-gravity, high-gravity or underwater environments. Some have even gained the ability to survive in ''outer space.'' Depending on the degree of their mutations, they may resemble RubberForeheadAliens, PettingZooPeople or even something straight out of ''Literature/AllTomorrows.'' Considering how little is known of the Deep Periphery, there may be an entire ''empire'' of Genecaste out there, waiting to be discovered...

* First developed by Clan Smoke Jaguar to save on limited resources, "Protomechs" are the intermediary units between Elemental battle armor and Battlemechs.
* " On the outside, they are designed to resemble beasts or mythical creatures to scare the opposition. On the inside, their pilots are so deeply wired into the machine that they feel like the machine itself is their own body - sometimes to the point where they believe it really ''is'' their own body. This manifests as everything from a god complex even outside their machines to feeling the pain if one of their protomech's limbs is severed while they're plugged into it (and since they're situated in the protomech's torso rather than the head, one wonders what happens to them when a protomech's head is severed...