The Star League is dead. Long live the Star League.

For two centuries the Star League bound humanity's worlds under the Cameron family. In 2766 that peace was shattered when Stefan Amaris of the Rim Worlds Republic murdered First Lord Richard Cameron and wiped out his family. General Aleksandr Kerensky and the Star League Defense Force spent thirteen years of civil war hunting the usurper down, and when Terra finally fell in 2779, victory had gutted both the Hegemony and the League itself.

The Council Lords stripped Kerensky of his protector's title in 2780 and dissolved the Council the next year. Rather than watch his army become a pawn, Kerensky ordered the Exodus in 2784 and led most of the SLDF out of the Inner Sphere, never to return in his lifetime. The throne stood empty and every Great House had a claim to it.

From that quarrel came the Succession Wars. The First (2786-2821) was total war, fought with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; it ended in sheer exhaustion, with no victor. The Second (about 2830-2864) saw ComStar quietly feeding secrets to one side or another, while shipyards, factories and the knowledge to run them were wrecked. The Third (from 2866) shrank into a long grind of small raids by understrength units, and the Fourth (3028-3030) finally broke the stalemate.

Five realms emerged from the wreckage: the Federated Suns, the Lyran Commonwealth, the Draconis Combine, the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation. Each century of fighting cost them technology. People could still use hyperspace drives and war machines, but no longer understood how to build them, so parts were cannibalized to keep 'Mechs walking. Mercenary companies became the lifeblood of every army, fighting by strict custom, with truces to recover wrecks and ransoms for captured pilots.

Above it all stood ComStar, the neutral keeper of the hyperpulse communications network, headquartered on Terra. Neutral, at least, in its own telling.