Timeline Confusion-Fall of the Second Star League

[MrPig]

I'm putting together a new Mercenary unit, and its formation revolves around the fall of the second Star League. However, when I comb over the timeline, I can tell the era in which it happened, but not the specific dates.

My best guess is at the formation of the Liberty Holds when the Star League was relocated there on 15th of June, 3085, but it's never outright stated that this, or any other day, is the specific date.

That said, I'm going to use June 3085 as my date unless and until I'm corrected.

[director]

Pinning that down could be tricky, in some ways the Star League began falling around. A number of events lead to it

The FWL Civil War being one.

The Canpopus-Capellan Union another.

The failure on Marduk by SLDF Forces (some of which I think were nova cats)

Appeasement and brinksmanship with the Combine also

Then the disolution of the Department of mercenary management in 3083 and the MHB becoming its own entity.

Even as the Combine was fighting all comers, then the ConMag went for Tikonov, things began to really spin apart there.

Then as if the SLDF thought that protecting everyone from everyone, on the DC and Conmag FS borders... it just .... collapsed.


Then you saw Peter S-D assasinated. and a series of strokes that while not necessarily all planned to happen together pushed the last few cards holding the SLDF upright. (at the same time the Yvonne S-D is also gravely wounded on the same day that Victor S-D also is killed in battle.)

I would probably agree 3085 is about the right time for its final fall.

[MrPig]

I'd say the creation of Liberty Holds marks the destruction of the Star League because there's no mention of Star League activity afterward. There were certainly events leading up to its fall, but the evacuation of the SLDF definitely seemed to be its last action before becoming the Liberty Holds.

[Storywriter J. Allen]

Agree with the Director. June 3085 is as good a pick as any.

There actually is a singular death event (I won't call it a trigger event). But it was the culmination of a lot of stuff that led up to it. It was publicized but I'm not sure if the information survived the one or more forum crashes we've had since.

It was in a document I created that detailed the formation of Liberty Holds and helped to explain the history behind its formation. In the process I also elaborated on what killed the Star League. Pieces of this info now appear elsewhere, such as the Liberty Holds faction page and in the timeline. But I'm struggling to find the entire document and the part I'm referencing now.

In it, it referenced that after the Star League Senate was relocated to Liberty, they were tasked to vote on the Star League Department of Communication. For a variety of reasons, that I'm struggling to remember off the top of my head, they were voting whether or not to split it off and let it become ComStar once again. There were valid concerns that the bureaucratic structures of the Star League were getting in the way of effective communications. I think there were other factors at play that I'm forgetting. For example there might have been pressure from the Great Houses to let it break away, because they were affected by bad communications too. They voted to let it break away.

In the process of that chaotic vote in the middle of a chaotic time, they failed to recognize that it would deprive the Second Star League of much of its current income (since several of the Great Houses were now withholding their financial support for the League for various reasons, citing a range of ongoing wars/crisis). The senate failed to realize how bad the financial situation already was at that point. A lot of the proper advisors/experts were back on Terra and not available for immediate consultation. Some of the advisers traveling with the Senate lacked the most up-to-date information. The Star League was also holding a lot of IOUs from the Great Houses, which gave the Senate an inflated sense of the financials, but in order to collect it would need to stay afloat long enough to see that day come. Time they thought they had. They were also under a lot of pressure to move quickly and complete the vote (having already faced many criticisms for being too slow to respond to each crisis). They were also fearing for their personal safety after a string of high-profile assassinations across the Inner Sphere. So they may not have been entirely logical and rational in their decision-making at that point. A perfect storm of factors working against good governance.

With its income base gone (short of the taxation of the SL Administered Systems but that wasn't nearly enough), the Star League quickly fell apart at that point. It was propping up a huge beauracracy and the massive SLDF but suddenly didn't have enough money to even even pay salaries for everybody, military or civilian. People just started walking off the job and SLDF operations ground to a halt as commanders struggled with collapsing morale and shortages of every kind.

I'm oversimplifying that by a lot. But the Director's post does a good job detailing the events leading up to it. By that point matters had already hit a breaking point. But it was the last domino to fall. The vote amounted to a vote for a government shutdown, but the Senate didn't see it that way, neither did their advisors. Some of them clung to their Great House IOUs expecting promised payments any time now, right till the end.

If I had to peg a date for that vote, I'd say around 1 May, 3085. With the ramifications suddenly felt and made clear by early June. Enough time for the news to spread and the sudden lack of a paycheck or a resupply of even the most basic essentials being noticed all over the Inner Sphere. Enough time for the last of the available funds to be dispersed and then to discover the accounts were empty (and for the knowledge of that to disseminate far and wide).

By 15 June, Isis had broadcast a "come here" message and droves of former supporters and personnel of the now dead Star League began relocating to Liberty Holds. That was a chaotic set of days in which the refugees were streaming in from all over, packed into starports and dropships like cattle, and each day people in these mobs would be constantly asking if Liberty was still there, fearful that it had been conquered or Isis Marik had been killed or something along those lines. Fearful that their last refuge was gone. The proper response that has since become memorialized was "Liberty Holds!" which was often shouted and repeated among the crowds of refugees trying to get there.