Editing Republic of the Sphere (section)

== Gray Monday, and the Fortress Republic ==
That tentative peace that the Republic had was completely shattered with Gray Monday; an event which seriously crippled almost 80 percent of the HPG Network, which was the sign for various underground nationalist groups to spring up and attempt to wrest control of their prefecture from the Exarch and back to the Great Houses. In shades of the Star League, yet again a betrayer came from within the ranks of the Republican highest command that was only narrowly thwarted, and an attempted plot set up by the senate sparked a civil war, tearing the Republic to shreds and absorbing dozens of planets back into their borders. Following a plan drafted in case such a thing happened, the Exarch at the time; Jonah Levlin, brought all loyal troops, Knights, and Paladins into Prefecture X, slamming the doors shut behind them and creating the Fortress Republic. In their dire time of need, the Fortress Republic revived Devlin Stone from cryostasis to help them figure out what the hell had happened and why, and to help deal with the Clans and all sorts of other nasty folk trying to get in and break down the doors. 

Stone hatched an unusual plan: he would invite the greatest threat, [[Clan Wolf]], to Terra, hoping to defeat the single symbolically mightiest enemy in detail. However, after providing Clan Wolf with the means to pass the defensive system that prevented any unauthorized jumpships to enter the core, he found that Clan Wolf had done something unexpected - they invited/challenged [[Clan Jade Falcon]] to join the fray, allowing them to pass as well. As a result, the Republic faced two Clans at the same time, one of them led by the complete psychopath Genghis khan fangirl, Malvina Hazen, noted for being rather atrocity prone. The expected help from [[Federated Suns]] failed to materialize (despite Julian Davion kinda owing the Republic for the help they gave him in his darkest hour). Stone's hopes of manipulating the enemy also turned out fruitless. The war thus savaged all three sides, and as the Republic had to devote far too much of their forces to try to prevent Falcon forces from being able to carry out atrocities, in the end, Clan Wolf was the last one standing, even if just groggily, over a field of burnt corpses.

Clan Wolf's Khans instead said there could be no peace so long as Terra was not under their control, and so Devlin, deeply aggrieved, hopelessly outnumbered, and so very, very tired, quietly agreed to dissolve the Republic in it's entirety, going on live broadcast to make the announcement in 3151. The Republic had come and gone in 70 years flat. With the death of what the Clans considered the faux Terran Hegemony, the Third Star League was born. 

Over the ashes presided the new ilClan Wolf, savaged by the war, a mere shadow of what it once was. The practically annihilated Clan Jade Falcon was reduced to a "bodyguard clan", and [[Clan Smoke Jaguar]] was revived from the remnants that had long served the Republic as the Fidelis. The rest of the Inner Sphere seems quite interested in just how many worlds in the abandoned clan occupation zones and defenseless Republic regions that each faction can get away with stealing.