Mech Every Day Sunday Special #2: The Scorpion Conspiracy

The Scorpion Empire caused the Blackout.

No, seriously. Hear me out. The evidence is circumstantial, and in some cases one must make some leaps of logical faith, but it rings true.

So here's the facts, as we know them. Just before the Wars of Reaving, Clan Goliath Scorpion trialed for and won the entire Eridani Light Horse contingent on Huntress. Many of the former SLDF troops were accepted as bondsmen, then quickly elevated to warrior status. The Scorpions have always had a fetish for historical artifacts, and the Light Horse were a living artifact; a unit that could trace its history directly to the first Star League.

This became a point of contention during the actual Wars of Reaving, but Clan Goliath Scorpion claimed that all of these Inner Sphere warriors had perished in combat. This was a lie. At least one former Horseman may have been seen in Nuevo Castille during the conquest of that region, and in any case the Scorpions were caught using genetic material from these troops in their breeding programs. It should also be noted that the Scorpions seem to have suffered no attacks from the Society and didn't purge their scientist caste.

Following this exposure, the Goliath Scorpions fled the Clan Homeworlds and fully set up shop in Nuevo Castille, later conquering the nearby Hanseatic League to form the Scorpion Empire. While they don't have formal diplomatic relations with the Inner Sphere and Invading Clans, they also aren't as staunchly isolationist as the remaining Homeworld Clans.

Fast forward to 3132. 77% of the Hyperpulse Generators - required for faster-than-light communications - in the Inner Sphere, Clan Occupation Zones, and Near Periphery fail. Other HPGs are taken out by direct action by an unknown enemy, including bombings, DropShip ortillery, aerospace fighter strikes, and even an assault by battle armor of an unknown design. This damage was compounded by computer viruses that scrambled many of the remaining HPGs.

The exact mechanism by which the HPGs failed is uncertain. There is some talk that it was a Blakist project known as "Clarion Note" that would scramble hyperspace itself on some level, burning out transmitter cores. (This is, to be fair, some grade-A make-shit-up technobabble.) However, despite Devlin Stone's convenient deathbed confession, there is no evidence that anyone associated with ComStar or the Word of Blake had anything to do with Gray Monday. Indeed, the adventure "Ghosts of Obeedah" states outright that the Blakist holdouts on that secret world had no idea who conducted the attacks on the HPG network.

So it wasn't any Inner Sphere power. It wasn't ComStar, it wasn't Blakist remnants, it wasn't an Invading Clan. In the novel Ghost War, it's also revealed that the Republic of the Sphere still has deep cover agents in the Clan Homeworlds and it wasn't any of those Clans. In any case, if it had been the Homeworld Clans, they would've invaded by the current day in the BattleTech timeline (3152).

As has been said, once you've eliminated all the obvious suspects, whoever is left - however implausible - must be the culprit. And that leaves only the Scorpion Empire.

But it makes sense. The Scorpions are obsessed with history, particularly the original Star League. It's only natural for them to want a new League, with an ilClan in charge. Of course they'd prefer it to be their own Clan, but having it be the Wolves (and their Kerensky heritage) is acceptable. With a new League in place and dominant over the Inner Sphere, the Scorpion Empire could simply petition to join and, as a blended Clan/Inner Sphere power, would be assured of a strong position. And if the new League failed, well, a weaker Inner Sphere is also good for the Scorpions.

The Scorpion Empire also has the means to effect the attack on the HPG network. As was stated previously, they never purged their Scientists. Indeed, the experimentation with Eridani Light Horse DNA strongly suggests that direct collusion between the Scorpion leadership and the Society. Events in a short story from Legends II also suggest that even darker and more secret experiments are still ongoing, with warriors in the Scorpion Empire being complicit in a conspiracy to keep them covered-up. So if the Scorpion Empire harbors a still-extant Scientist Society, then they have access to the kind of technology that could cause the Blackout - not to mention deniable combat forces.

So: by the process of logical deduction, it can be ascertained that the Scorpion Empire caused the Blackout.

Until next time! As a reminder, I am still out of work and dealing with medical issues. If you're enjoying these posts, please consider supporting them at Paypal.me/RolandBoshnack or at https://gofund.me/4c4a38ff. Thank you for read and for your support!