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August 10, 2007
Mechwarrior: Age of Destruction Factions: Comstar in the Contemporary Era
Here’s a Wizkids overview of Comstar, that former bunch of hermetic techno-worshippers who had the market cornered on both technology and creepy pseudo-religious ideology. . .
Another article focused on the backstory of Comstar, but this piece looks at Comstar in the context of the Age of Destruction. In the latest incarnation of Mechwarror, Comstar isn’t nearly as freaky as before; this ain’t your father’s Comstar. Instead, they’ve gone mainstream. While they still have their robes and mumbo-jumbo, they’ve combined it with a savvy business sense and a hand-in-glove relationship with the political powers that be. Instead of something like the Medieval Catholic Church, they’re more like the Anglicans now. . . Napoleon once asked how many regiments the Pope had. The same question could now be asked about Comstar, now that the Jihad has destroyed almost all of their Mechwarrior forces:
”In the end, ComStar remained, but a changed ComStar. Its mask of carefully cultivated neutrality and spiritual enlightenment had been burned away by what amounted to a civil war. Its army had been virtually destroyed, its survivors transferred under the banner of Devlin Stone and his nascent Republic of the Sphere. Faith in ComStar as the guardian of communication and technology had been all but destroyed, yet there was no one else with the means to rebuild what had nearly been shattered during the Jihad.For decades, the men and women of ComStar rebuilt. More secular than ever, they nonetheless retained ties to their mystical past, wearing the robes of monks and using the titles first enacted by Conrad Toyama as a symbol of the old ComStar. Yet the Order no longer had the fanatic mysticism of its past. No longer did technicians pray to make their machines work. No longer did every profound utterance become the quote of a sainted Jerome Blake. Most importantly, no longer would the Com Guards field an army of BattleMechs piloted by fanatical devotees. . .
In the end, ComStar became, as now, a partner to the Inner Sphere, its compounds including a standing garrison of troops from its host nations, or mercenaries approved to operate within said nations. These token military forces today are as much a legitimate protection force as they are a sign of the Order’s new covenant with mankind. In entrusting the protection of its valuable facilities, ComStar thus ensures its partners—its customers—of its intention, its new spiritual dedication, to never again rise up as a military power, to never again be able to bring war to the Inner Sphere on such a scale as the Jihad.”
Posted by Discoshaman at August 10, 2007 07:48 AM