ComStar

Their Jingle is mixture of those catchy 1980s commercial themes, and ominous chanting.

"And as BattleTech fans will know, as soon as the phone company gets the right to start a mercenary group, we're all truly stuffed."

– Perun

"Redde Creditori Tuo, Fucko"

– The unofficial Comstar Motto, as popularized by Tex Talks Battletech

ComStar was The Friendly Neighborhood Phone Company a faction in the BattleTech universe. Born from the remains of Star League it's notable for having a monopoly on FTL Communication and shady doings.

Origins

In the early 27th century, Star League scientists developed the Hyper Pulse Generator (HPG). First deployed in 2630, HPGs could send messages faster than the speed of light. Just like the introduction of the Telegraph or Radio back on old earth this was a big deal for everything from finance, commerce, diplomacy and getting shitposts from New Avalon to Tharkad, even if a network of relays was required due to range limitations and the high cost of building and repairing these complex mechanisms meant that this was an investment that required state backing to fully be realized. The Star League Department of Communications managed this big infrastructure project and everything was dandy, until the Amaris Civil War.

Surprisingly much of the HPG network survived the conflict, and when the ashes cleared one of the most prominent civilian Star League figures left alive was Jerome Blake, a Department of Communications pencil pusher and basically the last man standing of Star League's civil service due to being on vacation in the Free Worlds League when the coup occurred. While Star League was basically dead at this point, all of the five great houses still wanted the HPG network running and none of them wanted it in the pocket of the other four, either as a whole or carved up. Combined with some behind the curtains dealings with Kerensky, Blake was able to get things basically back into order on that front. Rebranded ComStar, they held control of Terra and officially declared their neutrality. Blake struck a deal with Alexander Kerensky to let him coordinate Operation Exodus on the sly in return for some political backing, most notably letting those ex-SLDF soldiers who did not want to go into the unknown but would rather serve some remnant of Star League.

ComStar's neutrality, monopoly on FTL communications and solid security forces basically let it not only endure unscathed through four brutal succession wars but thrive. They soon branched out into banking and issued their own currency, the C-Bill, which could be redeemed for data transmission based on file size and how far you wanted to send it. C-Bills soon became the currency of international exchange. Even as the Inner Sphere proceeded to lay waste to basically everything they could, the bulk of the HPG network survived. But as time went on, their mission objectives would evolve and mutate.

Organization and Ideology

Unusually for a Battletech power, there was no dominant dynasty in ComStar, because Cable companies do better when you don't know who's running them. The head of ComStar was the Primus along with the First Circuit as a legislature/board of directors. A Primus could name their successor, but the First Circuit had to confirm it.

ComStar only held one inhabited Star System as it's own territory, a fact which was somewhat off-set by the fact that it's Sol. Terra in BattleTech is not a Sacred Ecumeonopolis like how it is in another universe, but it is a populous world with a lot of symbolic value. As far as the Successor States were concerned, letting ComStar have it was the least bad option when compared to A: letting one of those other Four Jerks take it or B: taking it and risk having it be laid waste in the fight, earning your House a particularly egregious black mark. Beyond that there were a lot of ComStar bases, outposts and operations scattered around the Inner Sphere and Periphery. Many overt and legit, others less so.

ComStar generally avoided direct conflict whenever possible, given that it was badly outnumbered and held little territory of its own. Its influence came from being useful to the bigger powers, providing services they could not do themselves, and being a proxy for those occasions where they did not want to blow each other up. This did not mean that ComStar was a passive party who ignored the rest of the galaxy so long as they were left alone and the cable bills were paid, however. Having a monopoly on FTL communication as well as banking gave them considerable influence; their own minted money in C-Bills was and still is considered the Battletech universe's universal currency, and their ability to allow you to use their services was just as dangerous as their ability to turn it off on you. The last thing you wanted was for ComStar to suspend services so that the Draconis Combine could invade your frontier, with word arriving at your court weeks after the dropships began unloading their mechs while the Coordinator could better organize and reinforce his armies, all of which he could fund with low-interest loans. And all of that is before the fact that the ComStar guys were reading your mail months ahead of time.

Of course... that's all the typical ultracorp, surface-level stuff. A major, secretive part of ComStar's end-goals came from a secret directive from Blake himself, which slowly got warped over and over and over again until ComStar for much of its' time as a major power was not only your ISP, but also a secretive, mystical religion; believing that ComStar and Comstar alone had a holy duty to save Humanity from itself by taking control of all knowledge, and therefor all power. This meant that they often "rediscovered" centuries-old technology and only introduced it back into society when they believed it was "ready" for it, and this level of religious zeal became the bat that ComStar used to keep hitting the beehives of the Inner Sphere into further Succession Wars, all of which finally came to a head with an internal schism, and ultimately their dissolution afterward.

Compare this to say, another wargame's leading "tech-first" faction. The Mechanicus are also the beating heart of humanity's technological achievement and preservation, with a deeply religious bent with a penchant for hoarding potentially life-changing tech for selfish reasons, but there is a big difference between the Mechanicus does and what ComStar does; The Mechanicus will only ever horde stuff they deem especially interesting or valuable to them. If the Mechanicus finds some form of large agricultural vehicle, they will ensure that it isn't chaos tainted, make sure they can produce it, and then fart it out onto any Agri-world they can because agriculture doesn't interest the Mechanicus at all and helping the Imperium as a whole A: looks good and B: helps them by proxy. ComStar meanwhile, if put in the same situation, would still horde that agricultural vehicle. Because according to them, only they get to decide when Farmers from Frog Nuts get to do large-scale agriculture.

The reasoning for this, at least from ComStar's perspective, is that they feel that the Great Houses are a bunch of power hungry assholes (they are) who would ruin the Inner Sphere out of greed and hatred (they did). Similarly having one of them win and establish a twisted order which they'd dominate from a pyramid of Skulls is not a desirable outcome, being not only at best a cruel mockery of Star League but one that would have all of the original's weaknesses plus some new ones that would likely fall apart in a few generations leaving a new set of Successor States to arise from the Victor's Nobility to ruin things and setting affairs back to square one. To rebuild Star League, and do it right, the five Great Houses don't just need to be eliminated but brought to heel, put into line and their systems of power systematically destroyed for the greater cause of lasting peace and stability.

The starting premise was pretty reasonable, the methods of bringing it about were... less so. ComStar would retain the wisdom of Mankind's Golden Age while warfare would continue at a purposefully unsustainable though not apocalyptic level, causing hundreds of millions of untold deaths but not burning worlds. Technological progress would be held in check for their eyes, and actively stagnate or slide backwards away from their borders. The Balance of Power would be maintained and gradually the Great Houses would be brought to the point where they could be maneuvered into forming a new proper Star League without a bunch of feudal assholes with their own armies and petty grudges (instead they'd have a cult of corrupt telecom execs calling the shots), at the cost of that same throne of skulls previously mentioned being built from the Inner Sphere's citizenry.

Military

This is not to say that ComStar could not throw down when it needed to. It maintained its own standing army and navy known as the ComGuard. Descended from the bulk of the SLDF remnants who stayed behind after Kerensky’s Exodus, all told it was not a big force, but it was powerful. When you are making all the money, you can afford top gear for your soldiers, but that was just the beginning. While the Successor States were busy nuking themselves back into the Bronze Age, ComStar Squirreled away a fair deal of SLDF technology in remote asteroids in deep space. When nobody else in the Inner Sphere had FTL equipped WarShips, ComStar did. The most notable military action of ComStar was the Battle of Tukayyid, in which they managed to defeat the best forces of The Clans.

Where they were really spooky was in their super-CIA level intelligence network known as ROM (an acronym of the greek letters for each of its 3 core department: Rho, Omicron, and Mu). ROM were the ones who monitored all communications made across the HPG, and was by far their most dangerous player for ComStar, fielding several covert units that stoked discord throughout the Inner Sphere and were the biggest contributors in the collection of technology for ComStar's sinister purposes.

In the aftermath of the Blakist Jihad, what was left of Comstar’s military was folded into the Republic of the Sphere’s new forces and was permanently separated to avoid giving Comstar (& any potential Blakists in deep cover) too much power. Comstar also suffered a drastic drop in fortune once the HPG network was sabotaged on Grey Monday and was subjected to an aggressive buy out by Clan Sea Fox. The shadowy corporate puppet masters who beat the battle hardened genetically engineered elite of a militarized warrior culture were laid low by the latter’s money grubbing sub-section by economic means. Ironic.

ComStar's plots, schemes and antics

• Arrangement of the unfortunate demise of engineers and scientists who were pushing the envelope of Successor State technology too far via unfortunate "accidents", "suicides", the sudden contraction of rare and rapidly lethal diseases, etc.
• Sending out an explorer fleet to investigate the Deep Periphery, eventually stumbling across The Clans and basically starting the whole Clan Invasion.