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A brief history of the Inner Sphere
After man discovered the Jump Drive in 2102 he started to spread out into space, settling down in almost six hundred systems, lightyears away from Terra. By 2236 the first systems declared their independence from Terra with several hundreds more following their example. This resulted in a system-wide riot amongst the colonists who were starving without terran help. In 2314 civil war raged in the systems of the Inner Sphere. The year 2316 saw the creation of the Terran Hegemony which was established for the purpose of settling the conflict and bringing peace to mankind. In an attempt to do so, the Terran Hegemony tried to re-unite the vast number of independent worlds by military means but failed. However, this brought about the rise of strong leaders from several independent systems which eventually led to further complication in the late 24th and early 25th century when tensions between those leaders and the Hegemony escalated into full-fledged war. Immediately following the invention of Myomere Muscles in 2439 the Ares Convention was established in 2412 in order to minimize civilian casualties. This convention did in fact legalize war just so long as it was fought man against man or later mech against mech.
In between 2549 and 2569 the joint leaders of the great houses formed what has been come to known as the Star League which should have kept the great houses and Hegemony in check and indeed did. This made for a period of 200 peaceful years. Or so it was called. In the wake of its leader’s death in 2751 the Star League was infiltrated by a dissident group that wanted to destroy it from the inside and thus take control of the Inner Sphere. In 2784 a loyal general led 80 percent of the Inner Sphere’s military into exile. This however resulted in a massive power vacuum which in turn prompted the great house’s leaders to form the Successor States and struggle for control in a new Star League.
The following years were disastrous for all of mankind. Unending conflict and the three great Succession Wars threatened to tear the Inner Sphere apart. Even more, much year-old knowledge was lost on the fields of battle, not least of which was the concept of the Jump Drive. Some worlds lay shattered, others were cut off completely. It was not before the turn of the thirty-first century that the great house’s leaders finally realized that forming a new Star League by way of conventional warfare had become impossible. House Steiner was the first house to actively try and bring peace back to the Inner Sphere. Their declaration of peace sent in 3020 however, was ignored by every house except for House Davion. Together the two forged a secret alliance which the other three houses, Kurita, Marik and Liao, nevertheless were soon aware of and forced them to form an alliance of their own, if only as an equally capable counterpart. The equilibrium thus created was stable for the time being but tensions still were high and the wrong word at the wrong time could plunge the entire Inner Sphere back into chaos.