Volume LII: A Partnership for the Ages—ComStar Today

Fact Sheet: ComStar
Founding Year: 2785
Headquarters (City, World): Sydney, Australia, Terra
Official Symbol: A white inner circle, slightly offset toward the bottom of a gray outer circle. Extending from the center of the white circle and pointing downward is a single gray tail.
Location (Terra relative): Facilities on roughly 98% of all inhabited systems within the Inner Sphere.
Total (Inhabited) Systems: N/A
Estimated Personnel (3130): 14,687,000
Government: Corporate (with monastic stylings)
Ruler: Primus Lisa Koenigs-Cober
Dominant Language(s): English (official), others per station.
Dominant Religion(s): Agnosticism (official), others per station.
Unit of Currency: C-bill (1 C-bill = 1 second of text-only HPG transmission time)

From the outside, ComStar’s massive Class-A hyperpulse generator complex just outside Sydney, Australia, on Terra, is an impressive structure. Part fortress and part office complex, it is dominated by several small satellite receiver dishes clustered around a single, massive dish that occasionally “fires” a burst of blinding, blue-white energy into the sky. A powerful thrum accompanies each of these bursts, as much felt as heard by any living creature within a kilometer of the compound. Each thrum, one every hour on the hour, represents a massive batch of data, hurled into space and beyond with unerring efficiency made possible by centuries of proven technology and the studious maintenance of men and women who make it their lives’ work to see to its continued operation. Inside the massive ferrocrete walls that surround the ComStar compound, security troops wear the ComStar logo, while supplemental vehicle and BattleMech defenders remain in hangars marked with the insignia of The Republic of the Sphere, sheltered from the hot noonday sun. These guardians scan every guest who comes to the compound, with Star League–era sensors capable of detecting any weapon, chemical, or explosive known to man, looking for threats to the sanctity of the complex that serves as both headquarters and home to close to a thousand robed representatives of the Inner Sphere’s communications network.

The fires of the Jihad consumed countless lives, shattered mighty armies, and brought nations to their knees. They also turned every aspect of life in the Inner Sphere upside down. As the opening volleys of the Jihad demolished capitals and key command and control centers, the Word of Blake, using its intimate knowledge of the hyperpulse generator network, also sent an invasive virus through the system that affected HPG communications throughout the Inner Sphere by flooding all channels with repeating or scrambled messages.

Overloaded, the network collapsed in several sectors, destabilizing governments and devastating local economies, while paralyzing military command structures. Chaos reigned for several years as the various nations and Houses scrambled, mostly on their own, to recover and regain control throughout the crisis, while the Blakists continued to assault world after world, shattering entire military commands and major industrial centers. Targeted above all other objectives were the factories, facilities, and military bases of ComStar, the Word’s nemesis since the 3052 Schism. Com Guard troops, decimated by waves of defections and infiltrated by Word of Blake ROM agents, were repeatedly lured into traps, isolated, and destroyed with ruthless efficiency, forcing many commands to ally with local House units in order to stand a chance. By the time Devlin Stone emerged on the scene, over two thirds of the vaunted Com Guard had already been annihilated, with the battered remains clinging to an ad hoc coalition assembled under the command of then-Precentor Martial Victor Steiner-Davion.

Devlin Stone’s arrival likely saved ComStar’s military from immediate collapse as much as it saved the rest of the Inner Sphere from totally succumbing to the Word of Blake’s Jihad. Although Victor Steiner-Davion had done a tremendous job with what he had, and even managed quite a few victories, his support apparatus had been so compromised that several coalition commanders were routinely subverting the Com Guards’ command in order to fill holes in their own forces. Stone and Steiner-Davion likely saw salvation in each other when the rebel leader finally made contact with the war-weary Precentor Martial. Stone saw in Victor a man who could provide vital contacts with the rest of the Inner Sphere commands struggling to beat back the zealots. Victor saw a man his Com Guards could further rally behind, and whose goals did not include self-aggrandizement. . . . Together, they could wield the Com Guards as a core unit in a coalition vaguely reminiscent of the short-lived new Star League Defense Force, a force that would unite nearly every Clan, the Inner Sphere, and the Periphery’s power before the war’s end. —Vladimir Toolippi, Enlightening the Dark Age: A ComStar History, New Avalon Press, 3125

The Com Guards, indeed, made their last stands during the final days of the Jihad, often becoming part of the vanguard during assault operations against the last strongholds of their renegade kin. The history of the Jihad is replete with many instances of Com Guard troops fighting to the last man, demonstrating every ounce as much fanaticism as the enemy they once called brother. Thanks to many of their heroics, in fact, the coalition forces managed to bring a final end to the Jihad and exterminate the Word of Blake threat once and for all. At the same time the rest of ComStar struggled to reclaim the damaged HPG network, even in the decaying Free Worlds League, where once the Blakists held sway.

In the end, ComStar remained, but a changed ComStar. Its mask of carefully cultivated neutrality and spiritual enlightenment had been burned away by what amounted to a civil war. Its army had been virtually destroyed, its survivors transferred under the banner of Devlin Stone and his nascent Republic of the Sphere. Faith in ComStar as the guardian of communication and technology had been all but destroyed, yet there was no one else with the means to rebuild what had nearly been shattered during the Jihad.

For decades, the men and women of ComStar rebuilt. More secular than ever, they nonetheless retained ties to their mystical past, wearing the robes of monks and using the titles first enacted by Conrad Toyama as a symbol of the old ComStar. Yet the Order no longer had the fanatic mysticism of its past. No longer did technicians pray to make their machines work. No longer did every profound utterance become the quote of a sainted Jerome Blake. Most importantly, no longer would the Com Guards field an army of BattleMechs piloted by fanatical devotees.

In place of secret fanaticism, the Order has combined spiritual roots with an open, easy manner; a marriage of a monolithic corporation and a monastic brotherhood. No longer were their compounds sacrosanct from infidels, but were instead open community centers, creating a synergy of good will to heal the horrible wounds of doubt and war.

In the end, ComStar became, as now, a partner to the Inner Sphere, its compounds including a standing garrison of troops from its host nations, or mercenaries approved to operate within said nations. These token military forces today are as much a legitimate protection force as they are a sign of the Order’s new covenant with mankind. In entrusting the protection of its valuable facilities, ComStar thus ensures its partners—its customers—of its intention, its new spiritual dedication, to never again rise up as a military power, to never again be able to bring war to the Inner Sphere on such a scale as the Jihad.

Slowly, over the decades since humanity’s darkest hours, the men and women of ComStar have found the redemption and the salvation the Order has long sought. Once more, they are the keepers of interstellar communications, the lines that connect all of mankind in a universe of balance and harmony, safeguarding a part of our lives so basic—and yet so vital—that we all tend to take it for granted.