Volume L: Mystic Technocracy—The Ways of ComStar

Today, many peoples throughout the Inner Sphere look upon ComStar as an enigmatic order, a peculiar mix of high technology and quasi-religious spiritualism. Their organization is the curious mix one might expect if a profit-conscious corporation and a silent and secretive brotherhood of monks ever joined forces. The evolution of this mystical technocracy has had its extremes, of course, as anyone who remembers or knows the history of the Jihad could tell you. But while the extreme ways and philosophies of the Word of Blake may have soured the image of ComStar for contemporary and future generations, their origin and the development remain evident in the order even today.

Though many have claimed that Jerome Blake was a mystic, the fact remains that it was not until the reign of Conrad Toyama, his greatest devotee and chief administrator of the Dieron HPG station, that the organization would become the quasi-religious power itnow is. In fact, until Toyama, ComStar maintained a very corporate hierarchy, headed by a CEO (Prime Administrator), who held the strongest position over a board of directors (the First Circuit administrators), and which issued letters of credit, maintained its own corporate security force (known as ROM), dedicated to securing the organization’s neutrality against outside interference. In Conrad Toyama, Blake found his most fanatical believer, a man willing to do anything to achieve what he saw as the ultimate goals of ComStar, as Blake allegedly foresaw them. Prior to Blake’s death, the charismatic and ever-loyal Toyama was a wellspring of support, who is even credited with coining the order’s name from the names of the companies once employed to support the Star League’s department of communications. His beliefs bordering on fanaticism, Toyama would turn to Blake’s journals after the death of ComStar’s founder, and it was from these that he founded the order’s quasi-religion, the “Word of Blake.” —Vladimir Toolippi, Enlightening the Dark Age: A ComStar History, New Avalon Press, 3125

Various theories have sprung up in the centuries since Conrad Toyama, ComStar’s second—and final—Prime Administrator—took office. Some claim he hastened the demise of his beloved master soon after the aging founder of the order began to succumb to illness and age, seeking only to seize power for himself. Others say he did indeed receive an epiphany when he visited Jerome Blake on his deathbed in 2819. Regardless, few stood in his way when he ascended to the head of the First Circuit.

Soon afterward, based on his own fanatic interpretations of Blake’s journals—and, some say, after a short-lived rebellion and subsequent purge made possible by ROM agents throughout the organization—Toyama instituted sweeping changes in ComStar’s style and focus. Almost overnight, the First Circuit became the pinnacle of the ComStar Order, the Prime Administrator became known as the Primus, and planetary administrators became known as Precentors. Support staff for the Precentors consisted of Demi-Precentors, while technicians became known as adepts, and trainees became acolytes. ROM, the corporate security force, became all-pervading, its new mandate now included that it ensure total obedience to the dictates of the First Circuit and the Word of Blake. Membership in the Order became a lifelong commitment rather than a mere job, to ensure that none of the precious secrets and technology ComStar protected, developed, and maintained could fall into the hands of outsiders.

To justify these changes, Toyama made the Word of Blake required reading for all levels of the Order. These reprints of Blake’s journals now included annotations by Toyama himself, interpreting what he—and others—saw as divine inspirations, prophecy, and a holy mission for ComStar. By the end of Toyama’s reign, the transformation’s effects were unquestionable. ComStar was as the monasteries of Terra’s European Dark Age, a secret and ostensibly neutral order of chosen men and women charged with the sacred task of preserving knowledge for the day when mankind would again awaken from its folly and welcome the Order as its proper saviors.

. . . Once the Great Houses have beaten themselves senseless and bloody, we can emerge, offering a new chance to recover what they have tried to hard to destroy. All that saved mankind during its last so-called Dark Age were the churches and religions. These were havens for humanity’s learning and they stood alone as beacons in the darkness and foulness that humankind had become. . . . If ComStar is to survive into the future, it must look to these religions as a blueprint for surviving the wars that are unfolding around us. [Salvation 4:18–24] (In this one passage, Blake has laid the foundation for the mission of ComStar, to thrive and relight the lamp of civilization for mankind. Blake also foresees that by creating an oligarchy as the basis for ComStar, the organization’s survival is guaranteed during the war of succession that the House Lords currently wage. Only by patterning ourselves after those religions that survived in the past will ComStar live on to the future.) —From The Word of Blake, First Edition, ComStar Press, 2820 (Original remarks from Blake’s journals. Parenthetical remarks were interpretations and explanations added by Conrad Toyama)

Indeed, many of Jerome Blake’s “prophecies” did come to pass as the Succession Wars dragged on. Ignoring the Ares Conventions, the House leaders assaulted worlds using biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons en masse, destroying factories, cities, and entire planets if they could not capture and hold them. WarShips and JumpShips, critical to transporting men and supplies to a battle zone, became favored targets, with the former dwindling to extinction in the first two conflicts, and the latter so depleted that the ability to even make war—let alone maintain any semblance of commerce and trade—became threatened after a time.

Through all this, ComStar maintained its control over the knowledge and technology of the fallen Star League, enshrouding its command over the advanced interstellar communications grid with rituals as bizarre as chanting an incantation before working a transmitter, or praising Blake for every successful jump of its spacecraft. To outsiders, after generations of war and the general decay of civilization on hundreds of worlds, the adepts and precentors of ComStar seemed less and less like a cult and more like real-life magicians as time went on. Many joined the ranks of ComStar to receive the benefits of its enlightenment.

To further emulate the religious aesthetics supposedly called for by the Word of Blake, the members of ComStar took to wearing robes, and their members often shunned direct contact with the peoples of the worlds outside their stations. The hyperpulse generator compound became a modern monastery; its technicians and administrators became its monks and abbots. To be one of ComStar’s enlightened required one to surrender all material wealth and titles, but that did not stop many House scions and minor nobles from joining the Order.

When threatened by outside forces, either politically, financially, or militarily, ComStar could even use its control over communications as a powerful tool, threatening—and in some cases, executing—a complete shutdown of interstellar transmissions. Such “interdictions” would affect the offending realm until ComStar’s demands for compensation or repentance were met, carrying more political power even than excommunication had during the Dark Ages of Terra’s European continent. They also served as an ideal means of maintaining the Order’s sanctity without resorting to its long-hidden and vast supply of Star League–era war machines.

But while ComStar’s self-imposed mysticism did help preserve its secrets and the integrity of the Order, it also served as a breeding ground for some of the worst crimes in human history. Indeed, many historians today claim that the roots of most of the Succession Wars and the decline of technology can be traced to the machinations of ambitious ComStar Primuses, acts that perhaps even foreshadowed the inevitability of the Word of Blake and its holy war against mankind.

“The peace of Blake be with you.” For centuries, these words accompanied nearly every utterance of the acolytes and adepts of ComStar (and its Word of Blake splinter group). Even during the Jihad, both sides would intone this phrase as if in response to centuries of conditioning. These same words also hinted at ComStar’s underlying philosophy, and the man the Order has revered among all others as its founder and greatest teacher. Jerome Blake saw a glimmer of hope among his followers that humanity would one day benefit from ComStar’s efforts to preserve the lines of communication and maintain the knowledge they seemed fit to destroy in centuries of pointless warfare. This was the “peace of Blake” of which ComStar often spoke. Unfortunately, Blake’s followers, over the centuries, began to corrupt that same vision, building a religion around the basic principle of preserving knowledge. As successive Primuses saw, in the Inner Sphere, the ultimate prospect of control according to their interpretation of Blake’s wisdom, some believed in helping the collapse of civilization along a little. In the end, is it any wonder that the most fanatical and reactionary among these children of “Blake’s Word” launched the greatest and most vicious war mankind has ever known? Sadly, today, the phrase “the peace of Blake be with you” has become yet another casualty of that terrible era, when the interpretations of fanatics transformed it into a curse spoken just before the pulling of a trigger or the detonation of a nuclear weapon. You’ll not catch a ComStar adept or acolyte uttering the phrase today, as the hateful glares of those who remember only the worst in mankind have burned it away, proving that people can miss the message. —Rene Alosano, Broken Promises: The Legacy of the Jihad, Republic Press, 3127

In our third installment on ComStar, we will look at the greatest and darkest moments of ComStar’s history. The Clan Invasion and the Jihad are our focus for next week’s Tour. Won’t you join us? I’m Bertram Habeas.