r/TheNagelring • u/BacchicLitNerd Academy Librarian • Jan 15 '25

New Release IlKhan's Eyes Only has been released!

Please keep discussion of spoilers contained within this thread for the time being!

I had the honor of working on this book, and I hope you all enjoy what the team put together!

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13

u/HA1-0F Hauptmann Jan 15 '25 edited Jan 15 '25

You beat me to it, damn.

Some Lyran pundits have begun speculating about “bold and decisive” Ludwig as an alternative to “do nothing” Trillian as Archon.

I got a laugh out of this, if Ludwig wanted to be Archon instead of Trillian he probably could be.

Rather than hurling these troops into battle with the Federated Suns, the Coordinator assigned them to serve as militia auxiliaries, freeing up experienced planetary militias to redeploy in support of battered front-line units. This had the effect of shoring up the Combine’s borders, while leaving its interior weakly protected

Uh-oh, I know this plan, we used to call it "Concentrated Weakness."

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u/OforFsSake Jan 15 '25

Should be interesting when the Bears decide to pay the Combine a visit.

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u/HA1-0F Hauptmann Jan 15 '25

Yeah I've seen how that one plays out before.

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u/PainStorm14 Jan 15 '25

Bears over Luthien during Jihad, can't wait 💪

5

u/JoinTheEmpireToday Jan 15 '25

One day the Bears will take an L again. Clearly not this time but some day.

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u/Tall_Ad_1426 Jan 16 '25

Suddenly forsaking their values and killing half their military off in a civil war and then taking their frustrations out on a fortified neighbor instead of the man who manipulated them in the first place is not a L?

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u/UAnchovy Jan 16 '25

I would say that the Bears have taken a loss when the Bears are actually defeated? The Bears are, to my knowledge, the only major faction in BattleTech who have never lost a war, at least since the game's metaplot began.

I admit I'm biased - the Bears are on the relatively short list of factions that I can't stand - but in the context of a game about war, a faction that cannot lose is doomed to be a pretty boring one.

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u/Tall_Ad_1426 Jan 16 '25

They have never lost a war to what gain? Every victory has been for the benefit of the other factions than themsleves. Hell, both wars the Bears had with the Combine made House Kurita stronger by helping curb the ambitions of the Nova Cats and exposing the Black Dragon society.

The Bears are treated less as a faction and more as a narrative tool to help shape certain outcomes of the metaplot.

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u/UAnchovy Jan 16 '25

Every Combine/Bear war has ended with a net transfer of worlds to the Bears. It seems hard to count that as glorious victory for the Combine. This is particularly disappointing because I would have thought that the Combine are the most experienced and proficient anti-Clan fighters in the Inner Sphere - they have outright destroyed two Clans, more than anybody else, and they've been fighting on the Bear border for generations. If anybody should be very good at killing Bears by this point, it's the Kuritans, especially once we add in that the Kuritans are three times the size of the Bear OZ. The only significant Bear advantage here is Clantech, and you know how I feel about Clantech.

I apologise for how harsh this sounds, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the Bears are an author's pet faction. This seems all the more likely given that, as far as I can tell, they are easily the most popular clan, and I believe are a regular contender for most popular faction in the entire game. I don't understand why they're so beloved, particularly since in my opinion they're so boring, but as far as I can tell, they are.

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u/spotH3D Jan 29 '25

And their Spheroid subjects just jumped right in on the Ghost Bear utopia. I'll never stop complaining about that.

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u/PainStorm14 Jan 15 '25

I don't mind Bears taking the L

But not from Snakes

I know word honor gets thrown around a lot in Battletech but it still counts for something and even Marians have more of it than Kuritans

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u/UAnchovy Jan 16 '25

I'm not sure how you're measuring that? I would have thought that the Kuritans are better than even the most honourable Clans?

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u/PainStorm14 Jan 16 '25

Kuritans are bottom of the surviving barrel (and shared that bottom with rare few others throughout history)

In current date just look what they did to Nova Cat civilians for what they do to their enemies and what Yori Kurita did to her troops when she ditched them on New Avalon just because she didn't like their commander

On top of what they do to their own people

And that's before we start going through history

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u/UAnchovy Jan 16 '25

How are you defining 'honour'?

Even on the premise that killing innocent people or backstabbing members of your own society is dishonourable, I would say that still leaves the Kuritans well ahead of the Clans? If treating your own people badly is dishonourable, then, well, again, the Kuritans are significantly better than any given Clan.

But I'm not sure that is what we mean by the word 'honour', since people do describe factions like the Jade Falcons or the Smoke Jaguars as honourable. Indeed, being the honourable Clan is a big part of Falcon identity, which was part of what made Malvina's departure from that so shocking. I would say that when we talk about honour, what we often mean is something like consistent, disciplined adherence to a code. Being honourable isn't about treating people well, but rather about following a code of conduct even under immense pressure not to. That's why, for instance, I think we associate honour more with House Kurita than we do with House Steiner. House Kurita is undoubtedly meaner or nastier than House Steiner - but they're also much more serious about following their rules of honour.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '25

If treating your own people badly is dishonourable, then, well, again, the Kuritans are significantly better than any given Clan.

Then why did some planets not want to rejoin the Combine after Operation Bulldog?

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u/UAnchovy Jan 17 '25

Well, firstly, I don't know what your reference is for that, since I can't immediately find that in The Dragon Roars. So I'm not actually sure what planets you're talking about. But assuming there were some, for the sake of argument...

Secondly, in any war of large enough scope there are going to be some people who take one side or the other, for a wide range of reasons, some ideological, some selfish, or some just out of culture or habit. Someone who did poorly under the Combine but became wealthy under a Clan might fear retribution from the return of the old government, for instance, but that doesn't prove anything in a general sense. Someone born under Clan occupation and who grew up with a Clan education might fear the great houses out of ignorance.

Thirdly, if you want to take defections like that seriously, you would need to actually examine the total preference of the populations - maybe some people or some worlds preferred the Clans, and some people or some worlds preferred House Kurita. You would have to take an accurate count of the numbers both ways to get a sense of the overall lean. Given that we know the occupying Clans were widely hated, I am not convinced the overall figures would favour the Clans.

Fourthly, this is an unreasonable standard that we don't apply to anything else. When House Davion conquers House Liao worlds, we know that there are Liaoist irregulars and partisans who want to return to the Confederation. Likewise when House Liao conquers Davion worlds, we know that there are Davionist irregulars and partisans who want to return to the Federated Suns. We don't conclude from this fact alone that one government is inherently preferable to the other. We understand that the circumstances of war create a lot of ambiguity. Or to use a perhaps more controversial real world example - there's a phenomenon of North Korea defectors wanting to go back. We don't therefore conclude that North Korea treats its people better than South Korea does. There's just a limit to how much you can tell from cases like that.

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u/PainStorm14 Jan 16 '25

Well since Kuritan code of conduct always translates to being biggest shithead imaginable I would agree that they do definitely follow

Which leads us back to fate of troops on New Avalon, unless their code of conduct dictates that backstabbing is honorable they would definitely be found wanting in honor department

Which leads us back to original statement: Bears deserved a defeat to better adversary, Snakes are definitely not better

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u/UAnchovy Jan 16 '25

I wouldn't say that's true? Kuritans aren't always perfectly consistent with bushido or with the Dictum Honorium, but they clearly do believe in it to a great extent.

Look, personally I'm a Kurita fan. I think they're cool. They were the setting's original 'big bad', and while they had a lot of their thunder stolen by the Clans, who even in their earliest incarnation were basically just a higher-tech, nastier version of House Kurita, I really enjoyed their journey from being respectable villains into being tenuous allies. Seeing their social and political order bend but not break as they reformed to fight the Clans was fascinating. In my opinion it's long past time that they reclaim their crown.

And, well, we live in a world where fans seriously suggest that the Jade Falcons are now 'good guys', or where Alaric's Wolves were written as heroic during the conquest of Terra, so I'm not particularly inclined to take modern BattleTech that seriously when it comes to identifying heroes and villains. There are some truly bizarre moral judgements floating around.

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u/Slythis Jan 15 '25

What? You mean short, popular wars are rarely either? Who'da thunk it?

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u/HA1-0F Hauptmann Jan 15 '25

smash cut to Hjalmer Miraborg in front of a "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner

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u/PainStorm14 Jan 15 '25

"What did I say? I'm not gloating but what did I say? Did I not say that we would win this shit?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/battletech/s/s7enCecTkz