Mech Warrior 2: 31st Century Combat - Plot

Plot

MechWarrior 2 is a game re-creation of the "Refusal War". The player can choose to be a member of one of two clans, either Clan Jade Falcon or Clan Wolf, while engaging in a total of 32 missions (16 missions for each clan) in the year 3057 time frame. Set shortly after the Battle of Tukayyid between the Inner Sphere and invading clan armies, the plot revolves around an ideological conflict inside the clans. It focuses only on clans Jade Falcon and Wolf, both of which represent a different side in the struggle — Crusaders and Wardens, respectively.

The Clans are the descendants of the Star League Defense Force, most of which was led by their commander Aleksandr Kerensky into the unknown regions of space in an attempt to save the warring nations of the Inner Sphere from obliterating each other. These forces eventually splintered and formed 20 separate groups, called the Clans, creating a society entirely based around warfare and creating the perfect warriors for their advanced BattleMechs.

Over the years of isolation, two schools of thought divided the clans. Crusader clans wished to return to the Inner Sphere as conquerors, forcing the nations to unite and recreating the Star League. The Warden clans, on the other hand, believed that the clans should act as protectors of the Inner Sphere, only intervening if a threat of sufficient magnitude was encountered.

Eventually, the Crusader faction won out and the Clans returned to the Inner Sphere as an invasion force containing only of a small fraction of the clans including the Jade Falcons, Clan Wolf and the Ghost Bears. The invasion force consisted of both Crusader and Warden clans (chiefly Clan Wolf). The Wardens participated in an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by the Crusader clans. The invasion continued until the invading clans were challenged by the ComStar organization to a fight on the planet Turkayyid. If the Clans won, they would gain control of Terra (controlled by ComStar at the time) and if they lost they would halt the invasion for 15 years under a truce.

The battle was lost by the Clans and their invasion was halted for 15 years. In the wake of the defeat, Ulric Kerensky, the (then) leader of the invasion and warlord of all the Clans,as well as a staunch Warden and member (and former leader) of the Warden leaning Clan Wolf, was charged with treason and accused of purposely losing by the Crusader elements of his Clan. They claimed that because Ulric was a Warden, he engineered the defeat to sabotage the invasion, as well as accusing him of genocide since the Truce would prohibit the Clans from continuing what they saw as their sole purpose for living: war. They called for him to be stripped of his status, opening the door to ignore the Truce and continue the invasion.

As the basis of Clan law was might equals right, matters could always be settled by combat (in this case through a "Trial of Refusal," refusing the verdict against him) and Ulric issued a challenge to the Crusaders to uphold his status within the Clan Council and, as a result, maintain the Truce orf Tukayyid. The Jade Falcon clan, the strongest of the Crusader Clans as well as an historic enemy of Wolf Clan, took up the challenge.

This is where things stand at the start of the game. In the conflict, which became known as the Refusal War, the Jade Falcons fight to uphold the Council's judgment of guilt, allowing an immediate resumption of the Invasion against the still-weakened Inner Sphere. Ulric and the Wolves, however, are grimly determined to fight a war of extermination against the Falcons (primarily using the Crusader elements of the Wolves themselves, in a plan by Ulric to weaken the Crusader faction among the two most powerful Clans as much as possible) and leave them too weak to pose a threat to the Inner Sphere.