ECV Outbound Light

I've been very remiss in posting these last two weeks, largely due to preparation for a BattleForce campaign I'll be running soon. The setting is the bleeding edge of the Clan Invasion in 3049, which has caused me to go back and re-read a great deal of the material from that era. The original Clan Invasion was a time of a terrifying unknown force ripping into the Inner Sphere, and mysteries abound everywhere as it was happening. Now looking back on it from the mid-to-late 3070's, most of those questions have been answered, but some still remain.

The greatest question during the Clan Invasion was that of the Clan Homeworlds. Where were they, how many were there, how well were they defended? At the forefront of this question was the Explorer Corps, a joint venture between ComStar and the Draconis Combine exploring the Deep Periphery. Indeed, it was an Explorer Corps vessel that is often cited at the direct cause of the Clan Invasion.

The official history of the ECV Outbound Light is perhaps given most concisely on page 9 of Explorer Corps. The Merchant-class Jumpship set out from Bone-Norman with 2 DropShips (Knox and Golden Hind) and 53 souls aboard under the command of Precentor Vincent DuPont in June 3046. Two years later, on 27 September 3048 (The Clans, Warriors of Kerensky, p. 17), Outbound Light emerged from hyperspace in Huntress, the capital of the Smoke Jaguar space. Khan Leo Showers ordered omnifighters from the JumpShip High Guard to take the ESV, and the crew was taken off.

That is where the undisputed history of the Outbound Light ends. Subsequently, Khan Showers would use the incident to precipitate Operational Revival, the invasion of the Inner Sphere. There has been, however, considerable question as to the disposition of the ship and her crew after their capture. For instance, the Jade Falcon Sourcebook and the Wolf Clan Sourcebook both mention Outbound Light, but neither addresses her or her crew's eventual fate. The same can be said of Invading Clans, as well as Crusader Clans and Warden Clans. Ditto both ComStar sourcebooks. So where do we hear about the aftermath?

The Battlespace Sourcebook, written by ComStar in 3056, indicates the crew had their memories wiped (p. 15), but implies that they were returned to ComStar. According to page 9 of Explorer Corps, no element of the Outbound Light's crew was returned to ComStar, and the ComStar agent writing the document says that the current theory was that they were taken as bondsmen. Explorer Corps appears to be the more recent document, dated 3059. Still later, The Clans, Warriors of Kerensky, dated 3062, indicates that to the best of the author's knowledge, the 7-man Explorer Corps team itself was returned, but the remaining 46 members of the ships crew have not been heard from since, and the assault on Huntress in 3060 turned up no trace of the vessel or her crew (p. 17.) After this late book, the FedCom Civil War era begins, and we hear nothing about the tiny Merchant and her unfortunate crew.

Ultimately, Outbound Light is mentioned in the Illuminati and Wolverine conspiracy reinterpretations of BattleTech history in Interstellar Players and The Blake Documents respectively, but neither can be given real credibility. We may never found out what happened to Outbound Light and her crew. In all likelihood, she was pressed into service with the Smoke Jaguar merchant caste, and was absorbed into some other Clan after their demise in 3060. Unlike Weir or Osis' Pride, Outbound Light is not a massive battlewagon that can shepherd a lost colony of people through space, nor a lost element that might have escaped to return someday and save the universe as we know it. If we ever have, or ever will, see her again, it will be as some renamed Clan merchantman, her pivotal role in BattleTech history a fading memory.