The Periphery used to be the home of several independent states, prosperous with above average civil rights and only a modicum of aristocratic rule. And except for the heavy Misandry of Canopus, a downright reasonable amount of oppression. It was primarily settled by people who’d left Terra behind to avoid the conflicts that were consuming human space.

They mostly sat out the Age of War, which was the period of several hundred years of slaughter as the Great Houses of neo-nobility spawned by the Terran Alliance’s abandonment of the colonies, and then the formation of the Terran Hegemony after one of Terra’s admirals realized nobody could stop him from taking out by aiming the ship’s nukes at the planet.

While everyone else decided to fight each other for territory and resources they didn’t really need, but thought would be very neat to own, the Periphery just tried to take care of its own and avoid the heavy hand of the Terran government. The Great Houses ruled the Inner Sphere except for the core, which remained under the rule of the Terran Hegemony, and the Periphery, which nobody got around to conquering yet.

Then, the ruler of Terra, Ian Cameron, formed the Star League with the claimed goal of bringing freedom and advancement to all mankind. They promptly decided to celebrate it by violently subjugating the Periphery. To ensure their success, they did away with the Ares Conventions, ensuring that there would be no war crimes, by making the nuking of civilians, mass executions of prisoners, and gassing enemy soldiers, not a crime.

It was the bloodiest war of human history until the last of the Cameron Line died during a private unboxing ceremony turned military coup, at the hands of the leader of a Periphery State he thought he trusted. The war ravaged the Periphery and reduced it to non-voting members of the Star League.

Worlds burned. Centuries of technological development and scientific development were either destroyed, or yoked to the technological pyramid scheme that was the Terran Hegemony’s monopoly on the production of the most important technologies. Soon all major infrastructure was dependent on imports from the Great Houses, who were in turn dependent on the Terran Hegemony, which was in turn dependent on the rulers of Terra.

When the Star League finally fell in a bloody civil war that destroyed the Terran Hegemony, rendering most of its worlds to rubble, the Great Houses thought it a great idea to join in the slaughter, and turned on each other. But not without quickly attacking the Periphery States to ensure they wouldn’t recover from the collapse of Star League.

The Periphery collapsed in dramatic fashion. Terraformers broke down, infrastructure failed, and the ensuing plague of bandits, pirates, and warlords fought each other over the remnants.

JumpShips, once reliably travelling the stars, were plundered, *sorry, *impressed by the navies of the Great Houses, and destroyed. Worlds died from famine, and trade slowed to a trickle as only a handful of JumpShips continued to ply the few remaining trade lanes.

If the Inner Sphere is a graveyard on a scale known only to god, then the Periphery is the smaller mass grave that was bulldozed to make space for it.

They also pay better than the Periphery.

**Your name is: []Write in a name.

Choose your Sex []Son: []Daughter:

Choose your home culture. (Choose one) []Taurian Upbringing:

** You received a proper upbringing as a citizen of the Taurian Concordat. A nation built on the principle of ‘Fuck around and Find Out’, hyper-paranoia, an inability to recognize what is really a threat, and the record on ’own civilians killed with WMD’s while defending itself.

When you were six, you helped prepare and package ammunition for the militia. When you were eight, you could field strip a rifle blind. Before you were twelve, you were learning to snipe at potential invaders with a gun. By the time you were 14, you learned how to cook up explosives and set booby traps. The only reason it took you until you were 16 to learn to make fuel and incendiaries is because your parents didn’t want you touching pure ethanol.

Unlocks the special action: The Deadliest Game: A pool covered with fuel so you can broil a mech attempting to cross? Anti-Mech tripwires to make them stumble. Mines made of wood and plastic to bypass the standard detection equipment. You can attempt to set up a trap to ensnare and cripple an enemy mech. A good opportunity for salvage.

**[] Enslaved spacer ** You grew up as the crew of a space station, learning to maintain it like your family did since time immemorial. Until pirates needing technical expertise raided the station. You were chained to a Pirate’s mech in order to maintain it. This went on until you built a homemade laser rifle and went on a rampage, shooting your way through the Dropship. You fought your way out of the Dropship and used a stolen spacesuit to move to the Jumpship it was docked on. The Captain took one look at your scratch made rifle and promptly hired you.

Custom Component: FrankenGun A crime against aesthetics, cable management, and basic concepts of proportions. Be it a laser, gauss rifle, or PPC, depends on your starting components and the depraved thoughts you fancy upon. You are able to refurbish any energy weapon, and return it to a highly unstable if just as deadly, working order. Can also be mounted on a Toyota Hilux to make one hell of a technical.

[]Professional Catboy: (Not locked behind being male. Canopus is like that.) You grew up in Canopus. A nation founded on the idea of ’I am founding my own nation with Blackjack and Courtesans. Also, girlpower." A former matriarchy that pretends men have equal opportunities. Actually a nice place to live, and the only power worth a damn that accepts refugees and freed slaves as more than ‘cheap labor’ or ‘target practice.’.

You needed money to pay for a MechTech Education, and so you worked as a cybernetic Catboy in a Canopus Catboy Cafe that served high class officials. After your education, you stuck around a while, only to be fired when you got older. You learned a surprising deal about augmentations and limb replacements, thanks to having some installed on your body as part of your performances.

*Your cybernetics have left you somewhat twitchy and neurotic if your attention wanders. *

Starting Trait: Cyberneticist: You are a skilled if unlicensed cyberneticist. None of your patients have ever lived long enough to complain, but that’s never been your fault. Life is just dangerous for MechWarriors.

[] Nueva Castilla Squire: Imagine a nation founded by neo-feudal overlords who wanted to get as far away from the Inner Sphere as possible so they could preserve earth’s democratic values by settling down and technologically regressing into authoritarian agrarian techno-barbaric farming communities. Now make it spanish. That is Nueva Castila.

Your lord considered himself a new Don Quixote and eagerly traversed the Inner Sphere, searching out evildoers to fight while driving a custom built FrankenMech that you had to maintain. You learned how to maintain a Mech running on an ungodly Fusion and Internal Combustion power system that was put together like something designed by blind engineers locked in a workshop with a barrel of cocaine, out of said barrel.

Special Action: FrankenEngine. You are able to create a working Battlemech engine and accompanying power system of any size, to make a cored Mech combat capable again. Each of your creations is a crime against the concept of Fusion Technology, and could make the most secular Comstar Adept weep tears of blood and pray to Blake. You can temporarily revive a cored Mech to fight in the next battle. (Note: A Mech which has been cored needs a new engine, it can not be repaired. Engines are one of the rarest parts of Mechs to find separately, as its hard to stop a Mech without destroying the engine.)

[] Outworlds Alliance Aerospace crews: A collection of democratic worlds on the frontiers that have spent the past three centuries agreeing that unity is better than being divided, and still discussing how to actually go about doing that.

The Outworlds Alliance is not a place known for mechs, instead its finest warriors learned that compared to Mechwarriors, pilots have much longer life expectancies, better quality of life, and don’t have to trudge through the marginally radioactive wreckage of a better age. You did not partake in this, and instead you were assigned to maintenance. The Outworlds Alliance, loving its aerospace assets, has done a better job at maintaining a solid understanding of radio transmissions, and that was the job you got. You were an apprentice CommTech

In a world where many Mechs have to resort to honest to goodness direct radio transmissions, hand gestures, and other primitive forms of communication, being able to set up a functional radio network is very important.

Special Action Set up a Communications Network. By all the black holes of space, you are going to throttle the next man who writes their encryption key on a fucking post-it note. You’ve learned the workings of old Star League communications protocols, and know how radio transmissions work. Using a mixture of old baby monitors, walky talkies, and whatever you are able to scavenge together, you can set up a halfway functional radio network for even the most technologically deprived pirate bad. You ensure that the mercenaries you work with have a reliable communications network.

[] Rim Worlds Republic Remnant: Okay, so your ancestors were the soldiers who fought for Stefan Amaris and helped bring about the fall of the Star League and the subsequent slaughter of humanity and it getting nuked into progressively shorter versions of the history books. The Camerons had it coming anyway.

You grew up in one of the many bandit remnants of the Rim Worlds Republic, and there you learned to keep whomever was in charge that particular week, happy. Whether it be by maintaining their technology, or cooking them up crystal meth. The latter of which you got damn good at. Enough to pay for a ticket offworld.

Special Action: Bribe the enemy guards: While damaged Battlemechs will be guarded by the finest troops, the same does not apply to other vehicles. Many enemy and allied soldiers will be more than happy to turn a blind eye to you salvaging their stuff, if you provide them with a good time. You can salvage allied and enemy tanks, helicopters, and armoured vehicles. Choose your upbringing: Due to the extreme distances of the Inner Sphere, the difficulties of space travel, and the prohibitive cost of interstellar communications, contact with family is scarce and access to their resources is irrelevant.

[] Servants: Your family were servants and retainers to a petty self proclaimed periphery noble. Most people in the Periphery tend to be farmers, thanks to all the AgroMechs being looted for parts to maintain the BattleMechs, and all the tractors being looted to repair combat vehicles. So being the household staff of a Noble was a marked improvement.

Starting Trait: Servant’s child: You move with deference and that particular ability of servants to move about unseen, that makes it clear that you are someone who knows how to act in the presence of their betters. Knowing when to kiss ass is part of the occupation. You gain a bonus on social interactions. +2: Nobles and courtiers. -1: Working Class -2: Scum and villainy

[] You were the child of merchants: Your parents sold foodstuffs to interstellar traders in exchange for offworld communicators and other lightweight electronics. You never wanted for much. Having too many children to inherit the family business, they instead enrolled you in a technical college where you learned to maintain Technology.

Starting Trait: A merchant’s child: You look like someone who has money, but not the high breeding and etiquette of the nobility. You gain a bonus on social interactions with the following groups. +2: Merchants and middle class +1: Nobles, self-proclaimed or not. -2: Hives of scum and villainy

[] Commoners: The farmers and labourers of the periphery live lives that wouldn’t be out of place for many 19th or early 20th century farmers, except they usually have a communicator in their home, and might even have a community radio! You were the child of free farmers with a decent amount of land, and were able to be apprenticed to a local Tech.

Starting Trait: A commoner’s child: You don’t stand out in any particular way. *You gain a bonus on social interactions with the following groups. +1: Commoners +1: Scum and villainy -2: Nobles **IF *you’re asking them for something.

[] Criminal upbringing You grew up on the street, running with a gang for as long as you can remember. You’ve done it all. Drug running, extortion, shakedowns, robbing, the whole gambit of illegal activity. Eventually you learned to maintain your gang’s equipment, and got good enough at it, you went legit.

Kept the tattoos though. Starting Trait: A criminal’s child: You’re born to criminal scum and that is easy enough to see by your bearing and way of speaking. You gain a bonus on social interactions with the following groups. +2: Criminal elements. +1: Commoners. -2: Nobles if you are in their very presence.

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Plan Voting. A long early Moratorium as the quest is new and I want to give people time to get involved.