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.

ComStar Fleet, Revisited

With the release of StarCorps Dossiers earlier this week, we have learned that the ComStar fleet is in far worse shape than we previously thought. Not only was Case White devestating to the armada, but ComStar's two fleet bases at Luyten and Ross have been overrun, leaving ComStar with only five WarShips, and only two worthy of the name (StarCorps Dossiers, p. 210-211.) Only Invisible Truth and Bordeaux remain of the true WarShips, and somewhere along the line Dun Laoghaire was lost.

Unfortunately, this revelation invalidates some of the conclusions we drew previously about which vessels participated in Case White -- we now know that either 3 or 4 ComStar vessels were lost in non-Case White operations (perhaps during the losses of Luyten and Ross.)

The ComStar Fleet

One of the greatest revelations of the Clan Invasion was that not only did ComStar have the ComGuard, an elite army of troops, but it also had a fleet of WarShips the likes of which hadn't been seen for two Succession Wars. By the end of the FedCom Civil War (3067), 34 ships of the fleet are still active. They are (in alphabetical order, with class in parantheses):

Alarcity (Vincent)
Anastasius Focht (Suffren)
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Blake's Vengenance (Sovetskii Soyuz)
Blake's Vision (Lola III)
Bordeaux (Dante)
Brandenburg Crusader (Essex)
Cleansing Fire (Congress)
Deathblow (Essex)
Defender of Versailles (Essex)
Determination (Vincent)
Divine Wisdom (Lola III)
Dover (Faslane)
Dun Laoghaire (Faslane)
Enlightened Path (Volga)
Fire Fang (Whirlwind)
Fortsmouth (Faslane)
Galamorgan (Faslane)
Hammerstrike (Essex)
Hollings York (Congress)
Holy Martyrdom (Lola III)
Invisible Truth (Cameron)
Manchester (Suffren)
Montpellier (Dante)
Narbonee (Dante)
Plymouth (Faslane)
Ranger (Lola III)
Resilence (Vincent)
Righteous Fury (Aegis)
Roslare (Faslane)
Strength Through Adversity (Lola III)
Swift Justice (Aegis)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)

Of these, two (Hammerstrike and Blake's Vengenance) were lost at Tukkayid on 30 January 3068 to a Word of Blake attack lead by Deliverance and Blake's Sword ( p87). In March of that year, most of the fleet participated in Case White, the attempt to retake Earth. Although casualty reports vary, we have a pretty clear indication (Dawn of the Jihad, p90, Case White: Alpha, p5) that 20 or 21 ComGuard ships jumped into Terra on 9 March. By all account, none returned. So who do we know went in? We know the following ships were there:

From Dawn of the Jihad, p90:
Divine Wisdom (Lola III)
Holy Martyrdom (Lola III)
Strength Through Adversity (Lola III)
Ranger (Lola III)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)
Righteous Fury (Aegis)
Swift Justice (Aegis)
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Defender of Versailles (Essex)
Deathblow (Essex)

From Dawn of the Jihad, p91:
Blake's Strength (Black Lion)
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Narbonee (Dante)

From Case White: Alpha, p5:
Avenging Sword (Aegis)
Hollings York (Congress)

From Case White: Breaking of Chemical Bonds and Case White: Stars in the Time of Dreaming:
Vision of Truth (Potemkin)

All told, we can confirm 13 of the 20-21 ships that participated. Striking those 13 from the list, we're left with 19 ships, six of which are Faslane-class Yardships, not combatants. Actually, make that 4 -- we know from Jihad Hotspots 3070 p. 128 that Portsmouth and Roslare were destroyed in December of 3068. So we're down to 17 ships, 7-8 of which were also lost in Case White. Who do we know were not lost?

Invisible Truth arrived to the Case White party late and got away. Bordeaux rescued Primus Mori off of Tukkayid on 1 August 3068. That takes two off our list of potential Case White victims.

Interestingly, three former ComStar ships turn up in 3076: Righteous Fury, Fire Fang, and Hollings York are gunned down at Dyev by a combine Ghost Bear/Snow Raven taskforce while flying Word of Blake colors(Jihad Hotspots 3076, p. 88). We know Hollings York and Righteous Fury were at Case White. Even more remarkable, though, is that Hollings York was reported destroyed by the Word of Blake to their own commanders (Case White: Alpha, p 5), meaning we can't assume even those ships listed as destroyed at Case White might not be resurrected by the Word. The only real exception to this is Vision of Truth, which is indicated to have disintegrated on re-entry to Terra's atmosphere (Case White: Stars in the Time of Dreaming, p17), which would make any attempted salvage rather impractical. Also, if we take a leap with this particular pattern, we can conclude that Fire Fang was also included in the Case White exercise, and was captured by the Word of Blake then.

Speaking of ship formations, let's see what we can gleam from the ComStar organizational structures. We know that ComStar's fleet is broken into five divisions: The First Fleet, The Second Fleet, The First Independent Squadron, and the Second Independent Squadron, and finally two YardShips assigned to the Columbus garrison (Field Manual: ComStar, p. 44.)

• The First Fleet is based at Luyten 68-28, and has 10 WarShips and 2 YardShips. We know that at least 1 surviving ship (Bordeaux) and 5 participating ships (not to mention Invisible Truth) were assigned to this formation. We therefore can't draw any good conclusions as the unit assignment as a whole.
• The Second Fleet is based at Ross 248, and has 9 WarShips and 2 YardShips. We know two of these ships (Ranger and Defender of Versailles) participated in Case White, and we can't rule out any of the other 7.
• The First Independent Squadron has five WarShips, and is based at Tukkayid. Two of these ships were lost during the 31 January 3068 raid, and Righteous Fury and Swift Justice were known to have participated in Case White. Therefore, only Cleansing Fire remains unaccounted for in this Squadron.
• The Second Independent Squadron has only four WarShips. Of these, we know Hollings York, Avenging Sword, and Deathblow were all at Case White. Only Brandenburg Crusader is unaccounted for.
• Finally, the Columbus Garrison is supposed to include two Faslanes, Roslare and Galamorgan. The Columbus Distress Call in JHS3070, though, pretty clearly indicated it was Roslare and Portsmouth that were destroyed there. It is possible that Portsmouth (nominally party of the First Fleet) swapped out for Galamorgan at some point

So what have we learned? We can be fairly certain that Cleansing Fire and Brandenburg Crusader were not detached from their respective squadrons just for Case White, and that they were lost there as well. Along with the assumption that Fire Fang fell into Word of Blake hands at Case White and not in some subsequent exercise, we can now come up with 16 of the 20-21 ships that jumped to Terra on 9 March 3068. Sadly, nothing probable leaps out of the formation numbers -- at least 2 ships of the Second Fleet survived, even if all of the unaccounted for forces came from their command. There are only 2 unaccounted for vessels in the First Fleet, and we already know that at least some of the First Fleet did not participate. We are left with the mystery; we can only give a list of ships, and note that 4 or 5 of these vessels aren't actually in the service of ComStar anymore.

Thus, we know the ComStar fleet inventory is current a subset of these:

ComStar First Fleet
Invisible Truth (Cameron)
Bordeaux (Dante)
Montpellier (Dante)
Anastasius Focht (Suffren)
Alarcity (Vincent)

ComStar Second Fleet
Determination (Vincent)
Resilence (Vincent)
Manchester (Suffren)
Blake's Vision (Lola III)
Enlightened Path (Volga)

YardShips
Dover (Faslane)
Plymouth (Faslane)
Dun Laoghaire (Faslane)
Galamorgan (Faslane)

Look for future posts on the ComStar fleet as more information becomes available.