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January 9, 3065 – Word of Blake takes a meeting with Duke Essex. After helping to bring in the worlds of Nanking and Hall, they want us to take another world – Errai. It’s right on the border, so it makes map—sense. Errai also makes sense because it has a major factory on world, Maltex Corporation. It used to make BattleMech designs back in the Star League and Succession War eras, but their factory was destroyed, so they became more of a design and licensing firm for military hardware. They are the company that created and made mechs like the Thug, the Wyvern, the Assassin, and such.
After the clan invasion, ComStar needed some more mechs, especially after they lost Terra. A few months later, they approached Maltex with an offer of capital investment to reignite their company and rebuild it. About 15 months ago, the first Thugs and Wyverns rolled off the lines again, and into the ComGuard, which means some are on the pro-Victor side of the war.
For obvious reasons, Victor’s side has secured Errai. He‘s still, technically, Precentor Martial of ComStar. Word of Blake would like us to take Errai, so they can remove ComStar from getting these mechs, and put themselves there instead. They are willing to split production with us 50/50 if we do, and we can add Thugs and Wyverns to our unit. Old Thugs are still made in the Free Worlds League, reintroduced a few years ago and licensed by Maltex. No one is making Wyverns anywhere else though.
While an attack against Errai makes sense from a production and logistical standing, there’s just no way we could sell it as anything other than warmongering. Only two non-Chaos March worlds are a part of the Coalition – Zurich, who asked to join, and Nanking, who was conquered but sort-of willingly. Both were parts of the former Capellan Confederation taken in the 4th Succession War, and both were unhappy with their current situation having been switched from the Sarna March to the Capellan one, and both were ready to more to us.
Errai isn’t. You might think a mech factory world, one on the border, would have switched hands more with the Draconis Combine. Nope. It was originally a Terran Hegemony world, and then post Hegemony fall, the Federated Suns took it, and kept it ever since.
It’s not a smart move politically. It’s in the Draconis March, which has been a useful enough ally for decades. Our ally rules it.
Blake mentions that Maltex is pissed off at ComStar for skipping some payment despite delivery. They want to sell to Blake and others, but can’t. ComStar has an exclusivity contract, and you can see how likely that’d be with pro-Victor units on planet.
In case the political situation on Errai changes, go ahead and plan for us to take it. You never know…..
(Early BattleTech products were weird on this issue. Errai is listed as the place of manufacture for the Hatamato-Chi in Technical readout 3050 and other places, and Errai is the site of the production of the HC and in Combine control in the Objective Raids sourcebook. Later on, to explain this away, Errai and Maltex Corp were used as a smokescreen by the Combine intelligence to keep them from finding the real location of the production of the Hatamato-Chi, although that still doesn’t explain why the Fed-Com would think they Hatamato would be made on a factory in their own space. It’s handwaved as, “Maybe Maltex was building a factory deep in Combine space somewhere?” but that doesn’t answer the issue of why Errai is listed as the homeworld of the mech’s production) So I guess you can take whatever canon view you want on the thing. In our world, we’ll follow the major plotline – Errai does not make Hatamato-Chi, but since they make Thugs, it basically the same thing.
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