[Abe Sargent]

Blake’s demands to build re-education camps and their use of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is forcing us to make a decision we don’t want to…

Currently, we are one of the best off areas in the Inner Sphere. Are we willing to sacrifice our morals to continue to push ourselves over Blake‘s umbrella? Or, are we going to fight back, knowing that we will likely get trounced?

And frankly, you might not like the decision we agree to…

But in 3071, four years into the Jihad, we have agreed to many of Blake’s demanding-ish requests. We say no to the worst stuff (putting defensive chemical and biological weapons on our worlds), but we do have some re-education camps, Blake forces on our worlds, increased military sales to them, and a lot more.

By 3073 – Some commentators mention that you cannot even tell the difference anymore between Word of Blake’s protectorate and our state.

By 3075 – As the year opens, various alliances have formed and are beginning to win various battles. Seeing the writing on the wall, Duke Essex slowly begins to distance his world from the Word of Blake, just a little here and there

In 76, as the battles are turning and multiple fronts are falling, Blake voluntarily withdraws their forces to focus on defensive actions in the center of the Free Worlds League, Gibson, and in their Protectorate. Their worlds are falling. We begin, slowly, quietly, to begin to remove the tactical nuclear weapons Blake gave us, and shut down a few of the camps.

By 3077, as Blake is losing world after world, we lunch a major attack while no one is expecting them anymore, focused as they are on Blake, and retake Nanking.

As the Jihad begins to wind down, and we have removed ourselves from Blake’s umbrella, we continue to aid our allies in the Confederation and Magistracy, rather than elsewhere. Devlin Stone officially asks for our aid in attacking Blake, but we don’t want to risk it. We know we have Blake’s intelligence agency ROM all up in our Apollo Office, and all down in our administration and infrastructure. We still have Blake in our HPG stations. We cannot embrace the anti-Blake campaign right now, because if we do, who knows what will happen. As of right now, we still have a large public sentiment in favor of Word of Blake.

In 3078, former Blake fighters, losing in battles nearby, are flocking to our banner, and we are gaining large amounts of materiel, tanks, power armor, mechs, fighters, and tons of dispossessed folks joining our forces. Within one year, we will gain regiments worth of folks. Operation SCOUR by the allied campaign is getting closer and closer to us, and Stone really hasn’t decided yet if they are going to capture our planets or not. They’ve just been focused on recapturing Protectorate worlds. And if they do, which planets do they take? Quentin? Nanking? Talitha? Just planets we took in the Jihad or elsewhere? In fact, other than a couple of Combine worlds (Fomalhaut, Quentin) that switch hands regularly, and a pair of Draconis March worlds (similar situation) we only took from the Free Worlds League planets that were in the Sarna March, captured form the Free Worlds League in the 4th Succession war, and retaken in the 3057 invasion. Now we took them later on. We took no other worlds – so if you are juts using former Chaos March an Sarna March worlds as the border of our nation, just Errai, Quentin, and Fomalhaut, and the two from the D. March wouldn’t be in our casus belli.

And all of this just confuses things.

So to help out, Duke Essex orders the Gray Death Regiment to aid Stone’s Coalition, and personally hires several mercenary units to help out as well as loanin some on our payroll, secretly, without telling anyone in the Celestial Coalition, and hoping that Blake won’t find out. We also send a pair of WarShips to help out, and they jump out quietly.