Republic of the Sphere

Republic of the Sphere
Capital	Terra
Official Languages	Most languages spoken in the Inner Sphere
Size	200+ at peak, less than 30 as part of the Fortress Republic
Head of State	Exarch
Governmental Structure	Constitutional Monarchy
Military Force	Republic Armed Forces

The Republic of the Sphere was a major Inner Sphere power in the Battletech Universe, born right out of the Jihad as the largest state in the Inner Sphere for a time, and was as close to a reborn mini Star League and Terran Hegemony as you could make it without the dissolution of the Great Houses.

History

Coming out of the Jihad, every single Inner Sphere state, with some exceptions here or there, were exhausted from centuries of war. They had generations of war orphans to deal with, devastated infrastructure, Three Clans (well, more like two once Ghost Bear shacked up with the Rasalhagues) parked in their section of space, and after the Jihad, hundreds of worlds that either needed to be cleaned up or straight up re-settled thanks to the devastation brought about by the Word of Blake. And with that done, the feeling then was that if things returned to "business as usual", there'd be another Succession War, and this one would probably cripple the Inner Sphere for good and allow the Clans, who they still had quite a lot of animosity towards, to waltz in. The hero of the Jihad, Devlin Stone, was now commander of an army that rivalled that of the SLDF in it's heyday, and suggested to all that they come to Terra to hash out the creation of a buffer state between all parties; a Republic of the Inner Sphere parked right in the middle of it. Naturally ready for a few decades of peace (and probably not interested in arguing with the guy who could easily bulldoze them if they resisted), everybody but the Capellan Confederation was willing to allow this creation to exist, but the Capellans were naturally brought to the table by force to sign the treaty. The Treaty ceded over 200 worlds, many of whom were former WoB Protectorate space, directly to the newfound Republic, with Devlin Stone as it's head of state; the Exarch. He took office in 3081.

Right off the bat, two major social reforms began to help along the process of keeping the peace; a resettlement campaign which allowed for massive intermixing of cultures and after years of hard work, utterly erased old divides and hatreds from centuries of Great House rule, and a massive de-militarizing campaign, which typically took the form of all the really good BattleMechs ending up in the Republic Armed Forces, and the rest sold for scrap, recycling the materials altogether, or turned into IndustrialMechs or museum pieces. Owners were usually motivated for either the rights to become a free citizen of the Republic, or a massive paycheck; sometimes both if the 'Mech was good enough. These measures, combined with the now much more relative distance of the great houses, were more than enough to keep the Inner Sphere in a relative state of peace for over half a century. But like all major giant states in the Inner Sphere, it couldn't last.

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.

Society

The Republic was a Inner Sphere Constitutional Monarchy, with an elected senate coming from ten Prefectures (numbered in roman numerals), who left most of the legislative work to the senate. People at any time however could be recognized for their talents or their passionate service to the Republic, and could be uplifted into being a Knight; an agent of the Exarch and his Paladins, or his advisors. Knights could only be uplifted to Paladin by an open position among the Paladins; which usually meant an election, the death of a previous Paladin, or a retirement. The Exarch himself was elected from the Paladins of their number. The major goal was of course that the Knights and Paladins were people who had incredible fervor for the Republic would help build the state and keep it safe.

Thanks to the resettlement of many Clanner and Spheroid expatriate groups across multiple worlds within the Republic, the nation became a fairly diverse melting pot of different coexisting cultures. The society of the Republic is otherwise known for the peace that had come from it's social reforms that otherwise did away with many of the ills that befell Spheroid society, but eventually groups began to take advantage of their freedoms to begin to lure people into discontent with the Republic. It was this dissatisfaction and growing nationalism that led to the HPG Blackout creating multiple splinter factions inside the Republic's territory. By the times of the Republican Remnant, most were just happy to still be alive and "free" by their definition of it.

Military

Because the RAF was designed as a lean fighting machine with very little mercenary input and few BattleMechs within their borders, one could be forgiven for assuming the RAF was woefully underequipped for the job at hand of keeping all the Great Houses from trying something. And to an extant...it might've been true. This would be however a massive understatement of what made the RAF special, for while it was much, much smaller than most Inner Sphere armies, it was well-organized, extremely well-equipped, and well trained. Each Prefecture had three regiments each; a Regiment of Hastati Sentinels (Elite Units), Principes Guards (Armies of the people, beloved by pretty much everybody), and the Triarii Protectors (Named for roman veterans, but in reality a parade unit mostly to help create an integrated and passionate body of soldiers that the other two could call on), supplemented by independant units that were upgraded from Mercenary bands, such as the Corps of Knights or the Northland Highlanders. All of these units were led by Knights and Paladins, and while their actual experience level varied between Prefectures, the sheer preparedness and skill-level was higher than that of some of the very best of the Inner Sphere. In terms of black ops, the Knights of the Republic also operated a sub-branch of deep cover agents known as the Ghost Knights.

Augmenting all of this was the mysterious and secretive Fidelis. Secretly the survivors of Clan Smoke Jaguar, they are an independent branch of the RAF that answered only to the Exarch and swore a blood-oaths to defend Republic space, and in an army of small but elite fighters, these guys were the very elitest of elite. Seven Fidelis Infantrymen could overwhelm and de-pilot an active BattleMech in only a few minutes. They also had a fanatical hatred for any Clanners they encountered (stemming from their betrayal during the Great Refusal) and their aggressiveness at killing them on sight made their Republic allies speculate if they were the Minnesota Tribe. That's how badass they were.

Most Mechs from the RAF were designs that were either repurposed from blueprints created during the Jihad, or from developments immediately after where the last of ComGuard often left behind valuable LosTech for them to exploit. This, alongside the Republic Institute of Strategic Combat’s aggressive if risky R&D into hybridizing the best samples of ClanTech and SpheroidTech (particularly ComGuard and Blakist gear) churned out experimental wargear that often surprised the Republic’s enemies in combat. Most notable among the Republic's stock were the first major adoptions of drone technology into BattleMechs, allowing the Republic to minimalize pilot casualties in a time of Powered Armor becoming widespread on battlefields, as well as unique Tripod designs that acquitted themselves quite well in combat, though as a rule all of the Mechs they use are generally slower than average.

Lastly, one of the Republic's greatest and riskiest weapons was an obscure technology called "the Fortress Walls." Rumored to have been taken from the Word of Blake's research data, the Fortress Walls enabled Terra to seal off all worlds within the central Prefecture from KF Jumps and HPG transmissions into and out of those systems. Any attempts at breaking through without the access codes to lower them resulted in misjumps that returned mangled JumpShip wreckage. Unfortunately, use of the Wall was risky as any Jump blocks required the sacrifice of KF drives (which are hard to replace) to charge the Wall's shields. By the twilight of the Republic and the dawn of the Third Star League, only the Fortress Wall around Terra remained operational for the Wolf Empire to use.

Notable Mechs

• Ares: One of the aforementioned Tripods, one the heaviest OmniMechs, and Mechs in general, ever produced. Clocking in at over 135 tons, bristling with weapons in any configuration, and piloted by three mechwarriors at once, the Ares was one of the most surprising and yet brutally effective Mechs of it's time. It was made even worse for enemies that each configuration was nicknamed after a greek god (and most of those were taken up by other Mechs), meaning that not only was seeing an Ares a nasty surprise, it was often able to counter it's foes simply by overwhelming them when they were expecting a much different 'Mech. It is quite slow due to it's sheer mass, however.
• Doloire: The Doloire is the flagship Mech of the RAF, an 80-ton all-rounder OmniMech of which all four of it's configurations; Anti-vehicle, Long-range, Command Support, and Close Combat, are all kitted out with nearly 32 tons of OmniPod space to get crazy with, with it's fixed weaponry being quite formidable; ER Large Pulse Lasers on the arms, and a Gauss Rifle and Two chest-mounted ER Medium Lasers mounted in the chest, all protected by the CASE system.
• Osprey: A previously obscure Star League-era design that went extinct centuries ago revived for the modern day, the Osprey was revived by the Blakists and adopted quite quickly for Republic use thanks to it's impressive payload of a Gauss Rifle, an MML-7 system, two ER Medium Lasers, and an ER Small Laser, all combined with a Beagle Active Probe that meant not only could it punch above it's weight, it could find you if you started running. It's low speed was covered by four Jump Jets.
• Lament: The epitome of "punches above it's weight", though at 65 tons it's already packing quite a punch to begin with. a gloriously unsubtle design with two Heavy PPCs on the arms and two ER Medium lasers on the head, packed with Ferro-Fibrous armor and 15 double heat sinks which allowed the Lament to pound it's enemies with a full volley and not overheat immediately.
• Prefect: A 'Mech created out of Devlin Stone's desire to have a 'Mech that could better perform the guerilla fighting that had been instrumental to the Word of Blake's defeat, but also to keep the industrial sectors that he'd harangued during their reign busy. The Mech accomplishes most of the goals set out of being a fast energy weapon platform; it's slightly undergunned for it's size, as the 'Mech had to include a number of things to win over the manufacturers, but it does do it's job pretty well.
• Raptor II: A Medium Mech with a piece of technology so powerful it became legendary until it's re-discovery from the Jihad; the Void Signature System. Unlike other camoflage, the VSS straight up turned 'Mechs "Movie"-style invisible, meaning you could see it's outline if it moved around too much. As a result, it became the premiere ambush predator of the RAF, able to completely shut down 'Mechs entirely with a 'Mech Taser before they got a moment to assess their damage.
• Celerity: one of three drone mechs created by ComStar and the Word of Blake before the Jihad, it was an Ultralight quadrupedal design with an OmniPod interface that made it a versatile and fast disposable scout at the cost of being fragile
• Revenant: the second drone Mech salvaged from Blakist designs, it was a light Mech armed with a modest spread of lasers and support equipment once the Republic fixed the Blakist prototypes’s finicky electronics.
• Lich: the last drone Mech seized from the Blake Protectorate, it’s a Heavy Mech designed as a fire support platform with heavy ordinance while keeping valuable personnel out of harm’s way.
• Ryoken II: The latest in Jihad-era Clanner technology, essentially a two-seater Stormcrow redesigned to incorporate shoulder LRMs. The Ghost Bears sold a bunch of these to the Republic, inducing quite a bit of rage from the other Clans.