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Looking forward to more on this...it would work well with my idea of the Terrans tossing out the WoB and have a small interstellar state, size wise is like 6 systems...
The late 3050s is the time to do that, with the unsettled Chaos March, weak WoB control of Terra, and growing Terran military industry (gratis Comstar). Per the Blake Documents, Terran businessmen and diplomats were key in securing the pre-Jihad voluntary members of the Blake Protectorate.
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on topic: remember any issue with WoB has to be great enough to overwhelm False Thomas Marik's veto. No House Lord is going to let Sun-Tzu go near Terra without unanimous support. Attacking SLDF peacekeepers isn't that reason, nor is WMDs going on the two precedents beforehand.
Right. Tricky. So get the Terrans to come out and play.
Talk to the Bureau of Terran Affairs, talk to the power groups on Terra, businesses and provincial leaders. Ask them if they'd like to rebuild a...Terran Protectorate...over the disheveled worlds of Chaos March, which Terra formerly ruled. The core worlds of the Inner Sphere - those in the Chaos March - are also not inclined to rejoin their House conquerers, who ripped them from the Hegemony and then spent several decades nuking them.
So, this plays into Sun Tzu's "I'm only doing this to be a peacekeeper." He gets to use words like "plebiscites" and "Terran peacekeepers," and "ending the Chaos," and "returning the Star League to its rightful throne."
Draft timeline, suggestions welcome:
3061: IIRC, this is the year Sun Tzu becomes First Lord. He's hungry for Capellan worlds in the Chaos March and St. Ives Compact.
3062: After a year of dirty deeds in the Chaos March and St. Ives Compact. Sun Tzu sees the mother of all opportunities to make his life easier: WoB, pissed at Sun Tzu for interfering with their efforts to establish the Blake Protectorate, back the wrong Chaos March crazy resistance group, who goes on to nuke the handful of SLDF peacekeepers he's been using. Sun Tzu declares that he is now interested in liberating all of the Chaos March from the dread influence of WoB (who is outside the Star League at this time).
Before any House shits themselves at the idea of a Capellan-held Terra, Sun Tzu firmly announces that he hopes to leave Terra in the care of the Star League, where it can take its place as the rightful throne of the Star League. He further proposes the creation of the "Terran Protectorate," a new nation to be ruled by Terrans, for Terrans, and which will include several disputed worlds in the Chaos March (the ones other Houses might object to Capellans ruling). Isn't Sun Tzu an awesome statesmen? Sun Tzu thinks so.
The idea is questionable to the Star League, but it is getting pretty distracted right now. Kurita and da Bears are just about to go at it hammer-n-tongs, the FedCom Civil War is about to begin, and the FS is going to invade the Combine. But the Combine wants to annex the Lyon's Thumb, so some members make a watered down statement to the effect of, "See what the Terrans want to do."
3063: Covert visits to Terra identify alternative powers to WoB, which is getting plenty pissed at the idea that it'll be unseated as the ruler of Terra. WoB gets even more unhappy when it finds it lacks the usual despotic controls to really control Terrans - all control flows through the Bureau of Terran Affairs, which is a secular bureaucracy that has singlehandedly run Terra for 250 years, accepting only general policy statements from Comstar's high council. Comstar and WoB have no secret police, no infiltration into BoTA, and few patsies. Comstar did a fair job of convincing Terrans that the Inner Sphere was full of baby-eating barbarians and otherwise manipulating their information so they were pro-Comstar, but it did not directly control the planet. And Focht undid centuries of brainwashing in 6 years by opening the Comstar Vault of History and opening Terra extensive outside tourism and trade.
It's a volatile situation, and WoB commits a second mistake: it brings in extra WoB Militia troops and WoB ROM to crack down on Terrans who are simply talking about the cool-sounding idea of the Terran Protectorate. Terrans suddenly have dirty foreigners on their planet throwing random people in jail, censoring news broadcasts and websites, and so on. WoB ROM and WoBM are almost clueless on Terra because they have negligible connection with BoTA - it's like they just invaded a whole new planet. And the Terrans are swinging solidly against WoB with every abuse.
Sun Tzu is able to exploit the situation for propaganda purposes, but can't really invade Terra yet - the rest of the Star League is calling shennanigans and (fake) Thomas is threatening vetoes. What Sun Tzu can do is send SLDF peacekeepers to worlds near Terra, the future Terran Protectorate, and set up what he claims is the Protectorate government - which is just waiting for Terra to step in. The Combine is happy to do this because this gives legitimacy to its actions in the Lyons Thumb.
And the other thing he can do is exploit another WoB weakness: a good portion of the WoB militia is made of ComGuard units dissatisfied with ComStar politicking and involvement in House matters. (e.g., Victor Steiner-Davion is due to get several ComGuard divisions wiped out in the FC Civil War soon.) So he drops a hint to Terrans via his political advisors on Terra and...
3064: A jumbled group of Terran figureheads, like provincial governors and BoTA division chiefs, call for aid to the Terran Protectorate (but anonymously, so they can't be dragged off into the night), citing abuses and crimes against humanity committed by WoB on Terrans. They also (per Sun Tzu's suggestion) let WoBM units on Terra (those who seem less than properly worshipful of toasters) know that, hey, the Protectorate is looking for some new core units. Sign-up bonuses include Terran real estate, citizenship, hot girls, fast fusion-powered cars - Terra's rich and not afraid to share. Sun Tzu introduces the Protectorate to the Allied Mercenary Command (that was formed by 3064, right?) and its heavyweights, like the Dragoons.
In Sun Tzu's last months as First Lord, he oversees the deployment of Capellan SLDF peacekeepers throughout the Chaos March right up to the borders of the so-called Protectorate. He covers loans for the Protectorate government to afford the AMC (Terra's rich, it can pay back those loans), which offers regiments of leading merc units to aid the Terran plight.
At this point, Thomas Marik can call foul, but Terrans are now on the loose.
It'd be nice to think that WoB could be thrown off Terra quickly, but it does sit on planetary defenses and WoB has started its build-up toward the destruction of the Clans. This means that, scattered across the Periphery, on Gibson, and on Terra, WoB has probably has tens of regiments (all types), 30 to 50. (Could be worse: if this had waited until 3068-3070, it'd be significantly larger if WoB grew at the same rate as the ComGuards after 3058). But this is not an immense, single army: its a bunch of raw recruits scattered in many locations, and Terra is a big source of it (both in terms of manpower and industry). Terra has to survive the first counter-attack, and then it - if the new anti-WoB government holds together - should be fine. Sun Tzu's parting gift: Star League law banning the sale of arms to WoB for its war crimes on Terra.
As Thomas Marik becomes First Lord, the defecting WoB units and hired mercs buy Terrans time to mobilize their own units. Comstar is strangely inactive, citing an unwillingness to fight its estranged WoB brothers.
Comstar and the Word of Blake both fail to become junior members of the Star League at the 3064 Whitting Conference, owing to the Terran conflict. Instead, the Taurian Concordat and Terran Protectorate are admitted.
3065: False Thomas Marik is feeling some of the issues that turned him against WoB in canon. WoB has been embezzling far from from the Free Worlds than it was allowed; also, Fake Thomas doesn't like WoB's actions on Terra, which seem to be undermining the cause he thought he signed up for. So, he does not aid WoB and tepidly enforces the arms sale ban, though WoB has no trouble using cut-outs.
While Terra cannot dig WoB out of all Castles Brian, it has largely driven WoB units on Terra into guerilla actions and has secured its factories. With no heavy firepower to back them, WoB ROM is unable to terrorize Terrans into silence anymore and is methodically cleaned up by BoTA's police forces, leaving Terrans free to vent their rage at their ill-treatment. (Snotty rich folk are usually annoying, but their outrage is easy to direct.) The "Terran Protectorate" is able to reliably arm and equip its military forces, though properly training new Terran MechWarriors and fighter pilots takes longer.
The standing problem in 3065 is mixed control of Terran space. WoB can send its WarShips and reinforcements to Terra, if its careful to avoid the zones threatened by Terran-controlled SDS bases. Its piecemeal reinforcement scheme (sending in troops as fast as they can be pulled from scattered WoB facilities) is unfortunate, but the canonical Jihad shows that WoB is not a great military strategist. Still, its this sort of bleeding and occassionally successful orbital bombardment raid that keeps Terra on the ropes. (On the plus side, the deaths of millions of Terrans in orbital bombardments is undermining WoB support across the Inner Sphere, particularly from the True Believers who were entranced with Blake's message of peace, love, and toaster worship.)
By the end of 3065, though, Terrans have seized control of the last of the SDS emplacements, dug WoB resisters out of the last Castles Brian, and has restored the planetary HPG. This allows Terra to spend its enormous cash reserves (seized from the megacorp that is WoB) to hire mercenary aerospace units from across the Inner Sphere and erode the WoB orbital blockade of Terra. With Thomas Marik's resistance, WoB is also not able to pilfer any FWLM WarShips to thicken its blockade.
Elsewhere, Sun Tzu is cackling as he reclaims more Capellan worlds. The Combine is happy with its acquisitions from the Lyon's Thumb and distracted by the Clans. The FedCom Civil War continues and Comstar is distracted the Precentor Martial throws FS-loyal Comstar units into the Civil War.
3066: This is the year of the big WoB invasion of Terra, which gives Terran defenders exactly the stand-up fight they were looking for. The WoB guerilla units and small groups of annoying super-borgs were, well, annoying. But a clean fight after almost two years of preparation is exactly the wrong way to bring Terra to its knees, since it masses WoB's WarShips and troops in one place. Terrans use nuclear weapons on the fleet when it is over 75,000km from Terra (per the Ares Conventions), whittle down the troop transports with SDS fire, and allow the surviving WoB DropShips to land en masse so Terrans don't have to hunt down regiments of scattered invaders. Instead, they can destroy them in detail in a few battles.
[Seriously, any storyline needs a good, big battle to vanquish the bad guy.]
With the blockade broken, Terrans are able to freely trade with the Inner Sphere and gain access to Mars' mines and Saturn's shipyard, which means the Protectorate military will grow by leaps and bounds. With WoB's military strength broken and access to new military goods all but gone, the balance has shifted definitively: WoB will not be able to reclaim Terra, and is restricted to a ghost of its former military strength.
In the long run, the effects are long-reaching. WoB's military was lost to defection and destruction by Terrans before it reached the firepower it had canonical in late 3067. For 4 years, WoB was robbed of Terra's production, and the 3066 invasion broke its back, destroying most of its WarShips and remaining organized ground troops. In its place is a mobilized Terra, which has most of WoB military industry (both ground units and WarShips). Any plans WoB had for the destruction of the Clans are dead.
3067: The Fourth Whitting Conference is held on Tharkad. The Concordat and Terran Protectorate are promoted to full membership. In the future, the Star League council will permanently establish itself on Terra. The rotating system of First Lordships will continue for the foreseeable future.
With full membership, the Protectorate pushes to reclaim WoB's communication businesses as the foundation of the Star League Bureau of Communications. The watered down measure that is approved by all members of the Star League simply allows a field day on WoB on stock markets. The Terran Protectorate has to continue to battle WoB covertly, with lukewarm aid from Comstar.
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