805 replies to this topic

[Jaroth Corbett]

Tesunie, on 11 August 2025 - 07:02 AM, said:

As I don't have those specific books or resources, I'm going to fall back onto the Wiki (and yes, I know, people can change it and some have done so to win arguments on these forums in the past). Namely, here. Excluding the voting from before intel on the IS was collected, we start with Intelser.

That's fine. I understand using the resources you have access to. I appreciate that you, unlike 3 other stubborn, arrogant, misguided people I have debated with, understand that the Wiki is not reliable. I appreciate your honesty. I have maintained since I have been debating on this forum that I don't use Sarna because when I started debating I quoted it only to be corrected by people who own/read the books. Since I never wanted to end up in that position again, I stopped using it. Now maybe they've gotten their act together and everything they post there is accurate now but as the proverb goes, "Once bitten, twice shy." I don't touch the stuff.


Like I said, I covered a lot of this in previous posts after the thread got necroed but since it's you, I won't send you scrolling back to read. I'll just copy & paste. I am also aware that in franchises, things can get retconned so I work with the information I have in print (or digital) UNTIL I get something else in print (or digital) that says y replaces x.

Quote

The Crusaders gain enough traction to bring up the invasion in 2980. It was voted down. 20 years later it was brought up again and once again it was UNSUCCESSFUL but they push the issue enough that the Wardens get them to compromise with the Dragoons in 3000. The Dragoons stop relaying info around 3019. The deadlock STANDS. There is NO impetus to drive a go-vote for invasion. The clear cause of the Outbound Light showing up has the effect that the Clans believe more IS ships could show up and discover the Clan Homeworlds.

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The Wardens had the Crusaders locked up for DECADES. That is a matter of FACT. in 2980 the Crusader movement gained enough traction that a formal vote for invasion was put on the table and was UNSUCCESSFUL. When they tried again in 3000, the Wardens got them to compromise by sending the Dragoons. The matter was still deadlocked UNTIL the Outbound Light's appearance. THAT is what tipped the scales. Again it's a matter of record.

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The fact remains that the Dragoons switched sides and had stopped sending in updates. According to The Clans: Warriors of Kerenesky pg. 17, "The capture of the ComStar crew gave the ambitious Jaguar Khan the first solid information on the Inner Sphere in decades. Armed with it, he forced the Grand Council to vote on the long-postponed invasion."



It continues on pg.17 into pg. 18, "Faced with the prospect of Inner Sphere vessels discovering the location of the Clan homeworlds, and the very real prospect of an Inner Sphere dominated by the technologically advanced Federated Commonwealth, the Clans had little option. On 21 November, 3048, they voted to invade the Inner Sphere."

Quote

The Dragoons stopped transmitting back to the Clans around 3019 so they wouldn't have known that the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth would have merged into a "super" Great House. Invasion was OFF the table since 3000 when the compromise was accepted and it got voted down back in 2980. There was a stalemate UNTIL the appearance of the Outbound Light.



THAT event is what kicked things off and EVEN then, the most Showers could have gotten from it was not a blanket, "LET'S GO GET 'EM!", it was forcing the motion (the vote) back on the table and in light of the vessel breaching Clan space, not even the Wardens could be against invasion and ALL the Clans except Clan Wolf VOTED for invasion.

So in conclusion, if there was no Outbound Light, there would have been no invasion. The stalemate would have continued.

So according to what I have, the Clans had no fresh info on the state of the Inner Sphere UNTIL the Outbound Light got captured and that info was only available to the Jags at which point Showers then shaped that news to his advantage to get the invasion vote back up for discussion.

Edited by Jaroth Corbett, 11 August 2025 - 08:08 AM.

[Tesunie]

Jaroth Corbett, on 11 August 2025 - 07:50 AM, said:

That's fine. I understand using the resources you have access to. I appreciate that you, unlike 3 other stubborn, arrogant, misguided people I have debated with, understand that the Wiki is not reliable. I appreciate your honesty. I have maintained since I have been debating on this forum that I don't use Sarna because when I started debating I quoted it only to be corrected by people who own/read the books. Since I never wanted to end up in that position again, I stopped using it. Now maybe they've gotten their act together and everything they post there is accurate now but as the proverb goes, "Once bitten, twice shy." I don't touch the stuff.

Yeah. I recall the days of the ECM page being edited every time you turned around from it's TT description of effects, to whatever someone wanted it to be to match the current argument they are having on these forums, and then back again... Same went for the Crab and hand actuators. Did they have them? Did they not? Yes... most every variant of the Crab had at least one hand on it originally. But people liked to add into the Sarna (and get it removed) that the Crab was a poor raiding mech due to it's lack of hands...

I take Sarna with a grain of salt. It's still a good place to go to for information, but you do have to realize that it might not be 100% correct at the same time. I use to read a lot on Mech Factory app about lore and such. I personally go for novel information when possible, but as my library of BT novels is... limited between finances, age, lack of them being in print still...

[Jaroth Corbett]

No worries man. If you have any Clan related inquiries, you can request info here > https://mwomercs.com...orbetts-corner/

Cheers.

[Void Angel]

The problem with Jaroth's recital of how he lost two debates is an exercise in accusing other people of doing what he does - being arrogant and misusing sources. He'd repeatedly cite excerpts from some .pdf archive he owns that didn't actually support his points, and hand-wave away anything he didn't like if he decided it might be from the wiki.

I don't think I actually cited Sarna, but I did object to his dishonesty in hand-waving away any evidence but his own (misused) sources. Citations from a novel or something are not a magic wand you can wave in order to be correct - source materials are just that: sources. A source may be superior to sarna, but sarna isn't a priori invalid - if an intellectually honest person had a problem with something sarna says, the proper thing to do would be to produce evidence from a superior source, or at least demonstrate why Sarna's information might be wrong. Jaroth would simply mis-cite a .pdf, claim victory, and haughtily denigrate the arguments of those who objected to his misbehavior - all while insisting that the increasingly annoyed responses he got to his behavior were other people being rude to him.

To reiterate: while nobody in the universe is lily-white, the idea that the Inner Sphere were the literal aggressors in the Clan Invasion is a totally ridiculous idea, on par with moon truthers and the hollow earth. This point was supported many times to Jaroth, but he simply hand-waved away anything that drew from sarna, denigrated his opponents' arguments without refuting them, and claimed victory because he recited some magic words from a novel .pdf. I got tired of his unending and unsupported condescension, which is why he remains on ignore.

[Jaroth Corbett]

How did I lose when I simply restated what the people who made the BTU printed?

Once again he proves he had a comprehension problem. I NEVER said the IS was the aggressor in the Invasion, I simply pointed out (with examples from the source material) that it wasn't a paradise with all the Successor States living in harmony singing kumbaya. They not only fought each other repeatedly using brutal and barbaric methods (which again I cited from the source material) but they targeted civilians/non-combatants and to paint them as innocents and the Clans as menacing monsters was disingenuous and ignorant. I simply laid out quite clearly that the IS was ALSO aggressive.

When you can't make a better argument and all you can do is ignore the person, you've admitted defeat. Like I said these fools would tell George Lucas he's wrong about Star Wars.

I have the source material to back me up so I don't have to put my head in the sand and hide like Void Stillcoward and the others. The source material stands until it gets retconned by new source material. Once again if you don't like it, take it up with these people who created The Clans: Warriors of Kerensky:

Spoiler

I haven't lost a debate yet and as long as I can reference the source material, I doubt I'll start but whatever helps Void Stillcoward sleep at night I guess.

Edited by Jaroth Corbett, 11 August 2025 - 04:22 PM.

[Tesunie]

When one resorts to name calling, you lose points in my book, and respect.

I also still disagree that the IS was as bad as you seem to portray. Sure, it wasn't all rainbows and sunshine, but neither was the clans. The clans, might made right. If you disagreed with something, you could fight to make it right, even if you were wrong. As long as you were strong enough, everyone had to bow down to you.

The clans had their own atrocities, as much as the IS did. Clan Wolverine comes to mind, framed for a crime they did not commit and then basically murdered for it so that Kerensky could remain in power and consolidate that power. The Clans will break their own honor code if they think they can get away with it and not get caught doing so, as apparent in the first book of Twilight of the Clans (I believe) where Trent's mech is basically sabotaged by the head mechanic when he was trying to earn his bloodname, which is dishonorable conduct but no one cared enough to look into it... Jade Falcon almost got away with illegally absorbing Wolf at a trial of refusal (not a trial of absorption), and killed Ulric in the middle of a 1v1 duel with a modified ERSmL to act as a TAG for indirect fired LRMs. Turtle Bay (rather the commander issuing the order was "talked to" or not, it still happened by a clansmen). I believe we have other clan attacks on unarmed civilian personnel (typically Smoke Jaguar trying to control a rioting population).

As I said before, the Clans weren't exactly "living in harmony singing kumbaya" either. They also targeted civilians. They also destroyed infrastructure. Their combat system did tend to limit such actions, but after the 2nd Succession War, much of the IS also took steps to reduce damages to infrastructure and typically avoided the deaths of civilians as well.

Neither side was any better than the other. The Clans weren't good guys, and actually on average were repressive and had a hard caste system, with the warrior caste "first amongst equals" as the expression goes, which translates to "first over everyone else". Not to mention the extreme prejudice against freebirths for most of them, excluding them from certain ranks, positions, powers, and overall becoming 2nd class citizens or even less to almost a slave level. Very few clans permitted Freebirths any real freedoms.

If I had to choose a side to live as a civilian on, I would likely choose to live in the IS. Life might not be great there, but I feel it would be better and more free than living under clan rule. Especially after the 2nd Succession War. More so on any interior house world rather than boarder world. Especially if I'm what I am, a freebirth.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Completely agree. I never painted the Clans as angels, I was simply pointing out that the IS weren't either. When I show people that from the source material then get lied on by claiming I was doing things I never did by a couple of guys then the other one rage quits, calls me names and ignores me, it frees me to speak as I like. The point is, I'll always stand on what the people who made the universe said/created/printed.

[Duke Falcon]

Jaroth Corbett, on 11 August 2025 - 06:57 PM, said:

Completely agree. I never painted the Clans as angels, I was simply pointing out that the IS weren't either. When I show people that from the source material then get lied on by claiming I was doing things I never did by a couple of guys then the other one rage quits, calls me names and ignores me, it frees me to speak as I like. The point is, I'll always stand on what the people who made the universe said/created/printed.

BattleTech factions could be summarised easily:
{Godwin's Law} Germany vs the Soviet Union... No good guys just tons of grief and wars.
Or Crusaders vs the Muslims? Bad guys vs bad guys? Anyone vs anyone?
Ultramarines vs Common Sense?

[KursedVixen]

Duke Falcon, on 13 August 2025 - 09:47 AM, said:

BattleTech factions could be summarised easily:
{Godwin's Law} Germany vs the Soviet Union... No good guys just tons of grief and wars.
Or Crusaders vs the Muslims? Bad guys vs bad guys? Anyone vs anyone?
Ultramarines vs Common Sense?

Not gonna get into this anymore than this but the Crusaders vs Muslims is a very bad example....

Edited by KursedVixen, 13 August 2025 - 03:34 PM.

[Tesunie]

KursedVixen, on 13 August 2025 - 03:30 PM, said:

Not gonna get into this anymore than this but the Crusaders vs Muslims is a very bad example....

I was thinking the same thing... Considering that was a conflict of one group attacking another over and over again until the other group got tired of it and went attacking back. (Historically speaking.) Each side did bad things, but one side kind of started it.

[Jep Jorgensson]

Tesunie, on 14 August 2025 - 05:34 AM, said:

I was thinking the same thing... Considering that was a conflict of one group attacking another over and over again until the other group got tired of it and went attacking back. (Historically speaking.) Each side did bad things, but one side kind of started it.

Actually it was the other group that invaded first. Look up how the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire fell.
Hint: It was invaded by a new and brutal faction they had no history with prior, causing untold misery.

[Tesunie]

Jep Jorgensson, on 14 August 2025 - 02:47 PM, said:

Actually it was the other group that invaded first. Look up how the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire fell.
Hint: It was invaded by a new and brutal faction they had no history with prior, causing untold misery.

1. I didn't specifiy which was which.
2. This will require more research on my end. I wasn't even going to originally post, till Vixen did.

Spoiler

3. The Crusades happened in the 11th-13th centuries. From a quick google search (so take with some salt of questioning), "The Crusades were initiated by Pope Urban II's call to arms in 1095, aiming to reclaim the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, from Muslim rule and to aid the Byzantine Empire." And "The First Crusade was initiated by Pope Urban II in 1095. He called on Western Christians to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim rule, specifically Jerusalem, during the Council of Clermont, according to PBS. This call to arms was motivated by a desire to reunite the Christian Church, liberate Eastern Christians, and provide an outlet for the aggressive nobility of Western Europe,"

Just posting this to add clarity to the reason why I feel the Crusades might not be as justified here as "everyone is a form of a good/bad guy at the same time". Though, I guess it might fall into that as well, considering what happened on some of the Crusades. (Do keep in mind, the Crusades was not one group, but many. Some where more honorable and pious than other groups on crusade.) Maybe this is a better analogy than I first thought... Depending upon which side you see as being which faction group...

[Void Angel]

Tesunie, on 15 August 2025 - 06:10 AM, said:

1. I didn't specifiy which was which.
2. This will require more research on my end. I wasn't even going to originally post, till Vixen did.

Spoiler

3. The Crusades happened in the 11th-13th centuries. From a quick google search (so take with some salt of questioning), "The Crusades were initiated by Pope Urban II's call to arms in 1095, aiming to reclaim the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, from Muslim rule and to aid the Byzantine Empire." And "The First Crusade was initiated by Pope Urban II in 1095. He called on Western Christians to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim rule, specifically Jerusalem, during the Council of Clermont, according to PBS. This call to arms was motivated by a desire to reunite the Christian Church, liberate Eastern Christians, and provide an outlet for the aggressive nobility of Western Europe,"

Just posting this to add clarity to the reason why I feel the Crusades might not be as justified here as "everyone is a form of a good/bad guy at the same time". Though, I guess it might fall into that as well, considering what happened on some of the Crusades. (Do keep in mind, the Crusades was not one group, but many. Some where more honorable and pious than other groups on crusade.) Maybe this is a better analogy than I first thought... Depending upon which side you see as being which faction group...

It's important to note that Urban didn't spin up the Crusades out of whole cloth - the Byzantine Emperor Someone-or-Other had sent a letter to Urban asking for his help, as a fellow Christian, against the aggression of Byzantium's Muslim neighbors. He seems to have expected the Pope to send mercenaries to help defend Byzantine lands - and he almost certainly did not expect the response he got, which is pretty much what PBS listed. However, PBS is giving a general summary; and the summary, at least, leaves out that the rulers of the region were jeopardizing Western pilgrimages, and threatening to topple Byzantium itself.
From a political perspective, the Crusades came after hundreds of years of systematic aggression by neighboring empires (predating the founding of Islam.) In Urban's day, those empires were Muslim, and motivated in part by the Caliph's formal duty to prosecute the lesser jihad (bringing all people into Islam, or else into dhimmi status.)

So it's not one-sided either way: both religion and secular gain were motivators for both the Crusaders and the Seljuk Empire, and the European Crusaders were responding to aggression by (and attacking the territory of) an empire that was attacking Byzantium. Did the Crusaders comport themselves well? Not by our standards - nor by the standards of the Seljuks they were fighting; and they were more concerned with symbolic conquests, and gaining kingdoms and wealth for themselves, to govern their territories well - or even defend their nominal allies. The Byzantines of that day were as foreign to the Crusaders as the Muslims they were fighting, and the Crusaders eventually ended up sacking Constantinople in a sordid affair involving a usurping Byzantine emperor and the need to pay armies after a siege - this actually accelerated the fall of Christendom in the East by crippling the Byzantine Empire and hastening its fall to Muslim forces.

So... not much to choose from there.

How did we get on the Crusades, anyway?

Oh. I see.

Falcon's posts are deliberately obtuse and scatterbrained. I usually just skim past them...

[Tesunie]

I originally was going to leave it alone, but I also feel that Germany vs Russia in WW2 is a poor example, as we know the political party of Germany (which can't be named, which makes no sense from the "learn from history so we don't repeat it" stance as it's soft deleting it when we can't mention it) was just evil. Not to say Germany as a whole was.

Most modern day comparisons are likely to be taken poorly as examples. If anything I'd almost relate it more to Union vs Confederacy from US history, excluding the subject of slavery, as the war actually wasn't about slavery at first but was about state rights and how much power should a state have compared to the federal level. Just, one of the hot topics was slavery was all...

[Void Angel]

Well, it's Falcon - he/she/it is more interested in being zany than accurate.

The whole auto-censoring thing with the N@Z1s is there because calling people that is much more frequent than thoughtful discussion at times - particularly when the forums were constituted.

The best illustration for real-world politics is actually, well, large swathes of European history. The Inner Sphere is basically Space Europe with Space China and Space Japan thrown in for completeness - though it's not a 1-1 comparison. The Clans seem modeled on the Mongol invasions, but with a foreshadowed twist as well.

However... some people say that history is written by the victors - but that's simply not true. History is written by the literate. Particularly after the advent of the printing press, we can usually see how people thought about things from both perspectives. So the emphasis on sectionalism, State's rights, etc, actually seems correct, because it's based on the writings of Confederates - and who knows how Confedates thought better than they themselves? This was actually what I was taught in school.

But then people died. And as they died, the letters and journals in their effects passed on to their families, and were donated to various institutions - filtering into the collections of various museums, libraries, and universities. And those writings tell a much different story: "I cannot bear the thought of my son being considered the equal of a ***** Boy," for example. One of many examples. The secession documents, as well, often particularly call out the preservation of slavery as a cause. It wasn't the only cause, but it is solidly in the forefront of Confederate thought as reasons for the secession - according to the Confederates themselves.

It turns out what happened was that certain ex-Confederates started up the Lost Cause perspective because it helped them save face, and Unioners kinda went with it because it helped repair the Union. It was convenient to both sides, and much of the contrary evidence wasn't available yet, so it was settled history for a lot of years - but ultimately proven to be incorrect.

[Tesunie]

Slavery was a cause. The issue stemmed from the Union making it so no more states could legally have slavery. This make the Confederate states feel like they would eventually become out voted on the federal level as they eventually would become out numbered by non-slave states. The Confederacy was fighting for the rights that states should be able to determine for themselves if they wanted specific legislation, such a slavery or not, and that the federal government shouldn't be able to determine such a large choice on their own. So, Slavery was the hot issue, but the underlining aspect was how much power the states had to govern themselves and how much sway should the federal government have over the states.

Wont deny that slavery was the major topic. I'm just pointing out it wasn't the only reason for the civil war. (And most of this is not taught in US classes, I had to research this on my own after the fact, despite "World History" classes seeming to only be extended "US History" classes...) Much like the fact that the first person to own a hereditary slave (you were a slave and your children will be slaves, etc in a cycle) was a black person. A fact that is often over looked within history.

As a final note on this, I am not in any way supporting the Confederacy, nor slavery. I am just trying to present history as it was, and I think it is a fairly good example of some aspects of the IS/Clans conflicts. But your analogy of it's just space Europe with China and Japan added in is exactly correct. It's no one aspect, it's all of it, viewed under a different lens and told in a different manner.

[Void Angel]

It's important, though, that those other issues were not critical to the South - slavery was. It was overwhelmingly important, and that wasn't just a thing in that particular era. Throughout all of US History to that point, nearly every President was from the South, leading the North to complain about what they called Southern Dominance. But even with the Presidency (and its veto) solidly in their hands, Southern States had always been jealous of slavery, and threatened bitter war at every turn if there were even a hint of restricting the institution. The only reason they didn't explode when importing slaves became illegal was that the embargo increased the value of existing slaves (which is a darkly hilarious parallel to the failure of King Cotton to move Britain to intervene in the war later on.)

(Some hunter-gatherer societies practiced hereditary slavery - not sure how we can tell for sure which was first. The Atlantic slave trade was still fairly unique in its combination of racialized and hereditary slavery conducted on a commercial scale.)

Edited by Void Angel, 15 August 2025 - 06:24 PM.

[Duke Falcon]

o/

I am but a male, dear Void, so the "he" would be sufficient.
I am know my post sometimes are crazy. I try to keep thing funny in hope that debates may softened up a bit by jokes or humor. Sorry if I sometimes reach the opposite effect, really.
Last I just tried to pinpoint with my "style" (see above) that there is no really fitting example to compare BT factions. All are a vast, complex amalgation of dozens of historical eras and\or parties spiced with some grim-grey taste.

o/

EDIT

Maybe start a "Why do people dislike Duke Falcon" topic would be a good idea?
At least it would be fun for a few people? One may need to try that, I endure the critic

Edited by Duke Falcon, 16 August 2025 - 08:43 AM.

[Tesunie]

Void Angel, on 15 August 2025 - 06:20 PM, said:

It's important, though, that those other issues were not critical to the South - slavery was. It was overwhelmingly important, and that wasn't just a thing in that particular era. Throughout all of US History to that point, nearly every President was from the South, leading the North to complain about what they called Southern Dominance. But even with the Presidency (and its veto) solidly in their hands, Southern States had always been jealous of slavery, and threatened bitter war at every turn if there were even a hint of restricting the institution. The only reason they didn't explode when importing slaves became illegal was that the embargo increased the value of existing slaves (which is a darkly hilarious parallel to the failure of King Cotton to move Britain to intervene in the war later on.)

(Some hunter-gatherer societies practiced hereditary slavery - not sure how we can tell for sure which was first. The Atlantic slave trade was still fairly unique in its combination of racialized and hereditary slavery conducted on a commercial scale.)

If you look back far enough at basically any civilization, just about all of them practiced slavery, be it internally or externally (enslaving themselves or others). The Jews were probably the only ones I know of that had very strict regulations on slavery, and it was more often a "I purchase your debt, and you are my slave for so many years as I rebuild you up for later" (at least internally).

But yeah. Slavery bad. We all know it. It hasn't been a thing (legally) in most places now. The south may have been saying state rights (and that was the root cause), but really they were mostly fighting for slavery. Not going to argue the connection there.


For some reason, I feel we've wondered off topic, unless we relate slavery to the clans in some manner (which wouldn't be that hard of a stretch honestly).

[Void Angel]

Tesunie, on 16 August 2025 - 12:07 PM, said:

If you look back far enough at basically any civilization, just about all of them practiced slavery, be it internally or externally (enslaving themselves or others). The Jews were probably the only ones I know of that had very strict regulations on slavery, and it was more often a "I purchase your debt, and you are my slave for so many years as I rebuild you up for later" (at least internally).

But yeah. Slavery bad. We all know it. It hasn't been a thing (legally) in most places now. The south may have been saying state rights (and that was the root cause), but really they were mostly fighting for slavery. Not going to argue the connection there.


For some reason, I feel we've wondered off topic, unless we relate slavery to the clans in some manner (which wouldn't be that hard of a stretch honestly).

There's not a lot of historical evidence that the ancient Hebrews strictly practiced the Year of Jubilee, I'm told, but I haven't sourced that.

For the Clans, outright slavery isn't in their wheelhouse - or any of the Inner Sphere factions, for that matter. Pirates might do it, but it's not an issue for civilized space - or the Clan homeworlds. =]