In Medieval Europe, most people were peasants and they mostly paid taxes in terms of crops that they grew. 10% of your wheat went to the church, 30% of the wheat went to your local lord. The Inca Empire did not do that. If you had a farm where you grew maize or potatoes on it, those maize and potatoes were yours to eat, barter with or whatever as you saw fit. Instead, however, you owed taxes in the form of labour. Once a year there was a big party in your home town in which an Inca Empire official (sometimes a guy from Cusco, but more often a local dude working for the Empire) would give everyone a task to do. This could include working on Inca Empire controlled Land, maintaining roads, running messages as a relay runner, making pots, weaving cloth and serving in the Inca Army. You'd be fed by the Inca State as you do so and you'd also receive stuff for your contributions. The sooner your task was done, the sooner you could go home. This was called the Mit'a system. After Pizzaro and his gang conquered the Incas, they took the framework but instead of making stuff or maintaining roads, peasants were sent to the Silver Mines where they were often worked to death. The Conquistadors were jerks.
I’d like to add you didn’t own that land. The empire owned it, at any point they can redistribute you. The taxes as labor as you put it. Taxing the crops would be pointless since the empire already owned the land and could simply come take it whenever they want or need.
Honestly the incas are so weird it's fantastic: -They did collectivisation before it was cool (state owned warehouses along the massive road network) -Emperors railed their sister (no really like 99% were married to a close relative, shit is wild) -Lives 2000 meters above sea level, absolute gigachad. -State sponsored community work -mummies because why the fuck not Like where do you even start? They're such an anomaly in empire building.
As a mercenary, I fucking LOVE working for the Lyrans. Their checks NEVER bounce, and they've got the hookup on every mech you could ever want be it through mission rewards, purchasing from them, or salvage from the Combine and the Clans
@@devildevious2646 The mechwarrior 4 series. Less graphical but good story (vengance) fun merc company mechanics (mercenaries) and then meme it out with (blacknight) You can easely download them for free and controls ain't that hard and if you do happen to have issues with missions you can set yourself as immortal in settings to progress regardless. If you end up loving the setting and playstyle you can then always upgrade to mechwarrior 5 if you don't mind buying it with mandatory DLC's because the DLC's broke the maingame without it. (You can literally have a blackmarket trying to sell you parts and mechs that are not included in the base game but your enemies will shoot and stomp you with them regardless.) Its my main gripe with MW5.
15:04 Fun fact, the most popular (and commonly referenced) beer in the Inner Sphere is a Lyran product. Timbiqui Dark is brewed with a chocolate malt, resulting in a beer that goes down alarmingly easy and thus gets you *spectacularly* smashed in short order.
11:25 Imagine, your job is to sit in a mech all day while the Archon is in the room waiting for someone to do something stupid and to look intimidating.
@@jacobmcneer609 Yeah exactly atleast this way you're sitting down, also no one can see you, so you can probably munch on some snacks, watch some Netflix, maybe catch some juicy political gossip, great vantage point to do a little people watching as well. Honestly not a bad gig, depending on the pay of course.
You know, it hadn't occurred to me until now, but battlemechs generate a LOT of heat when they're running, even while idling. The archon must be cooking sitting between two running battlemechs all day
The Lyrans actually have some of the best light mechs in game. The Wolfhound, Hollander, and Commando are all Lyran designs and light mechs, and damn good at it.
I'd say the lyrans light designs are symbolic of their thinking in a different way. They generally focus on stuffing as much firepower into as small a tonnage as they can.
@@samuelbennett3441 Ah yes Wolfhound with bunch of Medium and large lasers , Commando packing as much short range missiles as possible and Hollander with a fuckin Gauss Rifle on the shoulder.
Don't forget the Zeus! It flies in the face of the meme other than it being an Assault, but it is a little Assault mech, that is actually cheap in comparison & rather versatile mech. If you are running a campaign or playing the RPG it's probably the best assault mech when it comes to initial cost, upkeep including ammo, & repairability. Taurian approved!
The Lyrans get a bad rap, they've made some of the best light mechs in the settings but everyone always memes about the Steiner Scout Lance. These guys made the Wolfhound to deal with the Kuritans, and it was so good that it was able to style on the Kuritans Wolf-Trap, and that was a medium mech made to counter the Wolfhound!
The thing is the Wolfhound is objectively a bad scout mech. It is a great "witness the embarrassment of dying to a light mech" machine but it isn't something you'd want to use in place of a Locust or similar. All of the Lyran's native light mechs are fighting machines first and scouts a distant "who cares".
The Wolf Dragoons helped the LC create the wolfhounds during a time that James' band has been scouting and spying on the inner sphere in prep for the return of the clanners, which is why when the Kurritans fought them and found the long sense lost plans to the annihilator; where they found fully functional ones after a bought. thanks to the dragoons, the inner sphere saw quite a few number of new mechs not seen in the many milenia, let alone varients you'd never thought useful, like the one company that brought the Banshee back from the dead, and made it sing the tunes of war it should have sense it's conception.
BattleTech also refrences it too. "Remember this is a Steiner lance. "Scout" might not mean what we think it means". And then you fight a damn assault lance. Technically neither are canon though since BT has this thing where only the books are canon and never the games, but they usually release a companion book for each game that canonizes it in broad strokes. So the Steiner Scout meme probably exists in universe though exactly how accurate it is remains up in the air.
Day in the life of a true Steiner geezer: Wake up and meet the Atlas. My little mechie, isn't she beautiful? Time to take Adelheid to mechball. Rev up the Thor, ye! Quick stop at Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces' and load up that gun. Get a mechs. Battlefield lookin' lovely today lads. Just a bit of bantershize. Bonus makes a 900000000 casualty win even better. Pop down local Title Store, Good ol' beurocracy! Look at that! Maid made dinner, lovely! Pop down have a couple parties with the lads, And finish up in the fortress of 1000000000 C-bills.
Adelheid? Nah, an Atlas is not nearly gracious enough for that. How about Gertrud, like our old cat? You should pay a little more attention to what these old names mean. They are from the times when Germans were those pesky barbarians who constantly came knocking on your door.
You start to notice something interesting when you actually crunch numbers on the Lyran military. Instead of having 'always more' stuff, they rapidly shuffle a very small number of very big and very powerful units around a bunch of so severely under-equipped local defense forces that they rarely get credit as more than militias.
You can't forget that the Wedding between Melissa $teiner (18-supposedly) and Hanse Davion (45) was where the declaration of war was made. by Hanse Davion of the Federated Suns part of the Fed-Com alliance that was forming. Melissa: "Here honey, to celebrate our marriage, I gift you a brigade (might've been more, or less I can't remember) of Battlemechs that $teiner will fund for the rest of time." Hanse: "Awww, babe! that's so sweet. I too have a wedding gift for you! The entire Capellan Confederation!" obviously I'm paraphrasing but he did promise his teenaged bride that he was going to invade an entire nation for her. At the wedding. On Terra. In front of all the other Great Houses and their leaders. Including Maximillian Liao. The leader of the Capellan Confederation. Battletech lore is so absurdly funny sometimes, it's great.
Played Hairbrained Battletech as a Lyran-born mercenary. I understood, that roleplaying goes on point after I critted King Crab via headshot after it's entire payload blew up due to lucky hit, weakening it's armour. From then it was collecting every heavy and assault mech under the sun, including Banshee, Zeus and Battlemaster and throwing C-bills at problems until they went away.
The Hairbrained Battletech game is fun. Get in good with the pirates and buy everything on the black markets. Before you know it, you'll have a Star League Marauder, some Annihilators (w/gauss rifles), a Cyclops-HQ and a missile boat for the Inferno+++s. Some people have posted alleged screenshots of them getting Kerensky level victory in career. I've capped everything for victory points except the money and gotten Legendary.
You should do one on the Taurians those guys have a motto along the lines of "Get off my property". They don't win every fight but they sure as hell make the other guy pay for it.
I wish Taurians were cool but they are basically a mary sue faction and all of their fans are insufferable. There is little in-universe reason why haven't been conquered, they simply haven't been conquered because the writers have decreed it so.
But to point out something about Victor's accusation: Katherine actually DID murder their mother and brother AND conspired with the Clans. Oh yea she also plunged the largest faction at that point, the Federated Commonwealth into a civil war, just to cover up the fact of said murders she did. One more thing: She also engineered the attempted murder of the man she pretended to love to cement her power in the Commonwealth. Yea she was as evil in the setting as you can get, she made the Dracs look like teletubbies at times. Edit: In one of the books, just before the Civil war, she just outright admitted to the assassinations and pretty much was like "Yea I did it and you have no direct proof AND nobody will believe you without the concrete proof.". She was so audacious, I hated her but DAMN she was a spectacular bad guy!!! Also none of that remorseful crap, or the " I HAD NO CHOICE!! I WAS FORCED INTO IT BY SOME EVIL MAN!!" Nope she knew everything being done was evil and pulled a Senator Armstrong and pretty much gave a "so what?".
If stephen ameris was alive to see that even he would have been shocked. And this is stephan we're talking about. Probably the one person in the history of The inner sphere's own history who was hated Most. At least Until she came along and totally Added an entire new Book to the library of evil.
@@theduchyofmilanball3157 Fair point. Amaris did go to advanced evil school. But Katherine did have everybody fooled till her fiance by accident survived her plot which led to her only partially exposed, like finding out the stuffed animal your holding is a rattler and you cant put it down, AND you have to be careful!!
Tenth Lyran Guard being the heir's unit is probably a Julius Caesar reference. Besides, obviously the First through Ninth are the CURRENT Archon's PERSONAL unit
PancreasNoWork: The Atlas is the King of the Mechs and House Steiner is the house of the Atlas. Also PancreasNoWork: Posts an image of the Atlas III which is best described as the Davions going, "We'll build our own Atlas with blackjack and hookers."
@@machinist7230 I wanted to avoid the Zeus, because, well, it is the Atlas-Scoutmech. It's the assault mech that works in many situations and is rugged enough fpr the slaughterhouse of the succsession wars. I wanted to avoid that design for these obvious reasons.
If I'm recalling right, they also took the Banshee and did something with it to make it more dangerous as an Assault 'Mech. (Well, more dangerous outside of it running up and punting the foot of a 95-ton 'Mech right up through the center torso.) ... though seriously, the WLF-2 Wolfhound is no joke. It's fast and was rather good for its stated mission of "hunt and kill other Light 'Mechs". The Commando is also kinda fragile but fast and armed with lots of missiles, making it a PROBLEM.
The reason people generally don’t like the Jihad and Dark Age is because it was an end times moment. WizKids (the company who owned Battletech at the time) decided to do a hard reboot and timeskipped the Jihad and into the Dark Age, they wrote nothing for the Jihad and it was a nebulous end time basically. Now it’s been backfilled by catalyst and it’s actually written pretty well, early to mid Dark Age still has terrible writing but late Dark Age and Ilclan are great.
Also it was fairly clear they didn't understand the story to that point and really didn't do much in the way of quality control on the dark age stories they put out. They had the Highlanders become the quasi military arm of the Republic and general stand in for "the good guys" and among two of the greatest sins they put to paper was a jump jet outfitted Pack Hunter that went blow for blow with a jump jet outfitted Atlas and WON. And no it wasn't some epic PPC vs PPC match where the Highlander Pack Hunter had to be smart and use tricks or terrain against the clan Atlus in a tense snipe and fake out match. it was fisticuffs and leg sweeps from the jumping, backflipping Pack Hunter that took down the Atlus while the 100 ton Atlus tried to do jump kicks against the barely 30 ton opponent. Mind you there was no reason they needed to fight up close, they both had perfectly functional mechs at the start of the battle. The other major sin they put to paper was a battletech murder mystery that didn't involve battlemechs, or even the factions at all. It was a random planet in the periphery that just so happened to only be advanced enough to match mid 2000's earth tech with a very similar culture to middle state America. The "mystery" was closer to a rejected CSI plot. It ended, plot unresolved, with the killer making it to the space ship launching facility and escaping with only the vague hints that he had stolen valuable mech data of some type and that he could have been working for anyone.
To note there was actually a plan to do the jihad story line first but real life made it so that it wasn't the best thing to do... then FASA collapsed at around the same time.
@@ASNS117Zero A large titan could kill 1000's of battle mechs, knight's, sure, BattleTech stuff could fight 40k knight houses and win all day. From online the average size of a BattleTech mech Mechs (height) Light => Commando (25 ton) = 9m Medium => Enforcer (50 ton) = 12m Heavy => Grashopper (70 ton) = 14m Assault => Banshee (95 ton) = 15.2m Vehicles (length) Light => J. Edgar Light Hover Tank = 4.7m Medium => Hetzer Wheeled Assault Gun = 6.9m Heavy => Rommel Tank = 8.6m Assault => Banshee = 9.5m Where as for titans Most Titans stand between 15 and 60 meters (about 50 to 196 feet) tall "A Reaver Battle Titan is an immense war machine that towers 25.21 meters" (smaller sized titan) Then you add void shields, so all your lazers and cannon rounds are usless for the first few days of combat, here is something else from the internet about void shields "One technology really good vs nukes would be the Void shields, which operate via Warp technology, absorbing the energy of the attacks and displacing them into the Immaterium. They are capable of dissipating incoming EM, Thermal and Rad energy rather efficiently, making them highly suitable for the task." So idk that a BattleTech mech is going to kill something that has a shield that helps it survive being nuked. Then we can move to stuff like: "Looming over even a Warlord-class Titan at 40.91 metres (approximately 134 feet) in height, the Warmaster is equipped with a pair of Suzerain-class Plasma Destructors that turn anything they hit into molten slag, a Titan-sized Revelator Missile Launcher and a pair of Turbo-Laser Destructors" And this is not even the biggest titans.
I'll never buy models to paint, but i can appreciate the lore put together by these companies that want to sell models. And your method of sharing that lore tickles my pancreas in just the right way. Carry on.
i’ve been getting into battletech a lot recently, watching the old show and playing mechwarrior 3, glad my boy pancreas is also into this - hope to see more in the future
i'd also look into Mechwarrior 2 a bit. it's non canon, but between 2 and Mercenaries 2; you can have alot of fun with it. MW2 also has a nice lore dump of pre and post clan legacies.
Ah, Lyrans I love figthing them, not only we can salvage nice heavy and assault mech from them. Their mechwarriors and commanders basically will give you them free of charge wave after wave. Just don't run out of ammunition, hit and run, and be aware that there can be a competent Lyran leader or Mechwarrior every century or two. Clans have learned that the hard way.
As a member of House Davion since the conflict on Carver V, I like how you present House Steiner. Can't wait to hear how you handle Davion next. But for Liao? Show no mercy. Because they'll NOT show you the same courtesy.
Battletech is one of my favorite worlds. That said, I realized I'm perpetually stuck in the CLAN invasion/post-CLAN invasion just a bit afterward. I have zero idea about the jihad and just anything in general post Invasion. Just cuz the invasion was so damn cool.
A lot of the fanbase does...sadly, which sucks because the Dark Age (after its genuinely ROUGH start) gets genuinely good and while Ilclan era has a decidedly Clan-focus which at lot of people hates genuinely every book has at least something interesting or at least intriguing inside of it. Then again, I am also a Clan-fanboy who loves reading pulp fiction and battletech is just that. Reading guide: Start more recent stuff set in the Jihad (9/10 those stuff are genuinely really great, the old stuff is either painfully early 2000s IRAQ war or just not very good. Do note the Sourcebook on the Wars of Reaving is a treat in general even if you hate the clans since its just really well written and is ENORMOUSLY important to all clan storylines.) The Dark age is either you totally skip the first like four or five books or just fallow Alaric and the wolves as he effectively becomes the Main character of the story especially in lead up to Ilclan (get ready for shirtless scenes, and buff man-tities). Finally, it's up to you what you want to read in Ilclan first since its all happening more-or-less at the same time so far but specifically I recommend either The Ilclan Sourcebook which is an exhaustive breakdown on what the ilclan is and how everyone got there or alternatively jump into the book "Damocles Sanction" since it is easily tied for the best book in the era so far. The only thing I plead is that you DO NOT read the Sourcebooks for the Jihad, unlike all others they are written in universe and since its relies entirely on in-universe-conspiracies reads like House of Leaves if it was Written by Fox News in early 00s.
I'll go to bat for the FedCom Civil War and Jihad eras. Recent releases have done a good job of fleshing out the timeline, and if you re-read some of the later books you can see how the Word of Blake was being built up as a potential source of trouble. Also the tech reset was very temporary. I think that both the Jihad and Dark Age were interesting ideas that were executed poorly, but I was introduced to Battletech via the Dark Age novels, so I might be slightly biased.
It felt like a mindblowing "oh, of course!" that the clanners had an inside group, being wolfs dragoons doing their thing. was a hell of an experience.
@@Corruption922, As a newbie I think at the very least the basic premise of the Jihad is deliciously ironic as a resolution to ComStar's arc as a whole. From what I've read though it seems like Devlin Stone, the Republic of the Sphere and Gray Monday are completely shoehorned in out of left field and I'd prefer something more self-contained (for lack of a better term) to shake up the setting. Something like FedCom survives the Civil War and continues to disrupt the power balance which helps push WoB over the edge, though that might be too radical a change
22:32 That pictured is actually the Davion Atlas III. Also the Lyrans using Atlas in everything is kinda exaggerated. Now if you want the true Assault mech of choice for the Lyrans, it would be the Zeus. Kinda sad you didn't talk about it since it was basically the premier assault mech when it was introduced. The first two prototypes rolled up after the Combine broke some lines and beat them back long enough for reinforcements. It was relatively quick compared to most assault mechs and packed a mean punch. Atlas memes are fun and all, but the Zeus is where it is at with the Lyrans.
I enjoyed this abridged lore dump, maybe you should go under a rebranding like Big red40k... I suggest the name "Neuro-HelmNoWork" or "UrbanMechNoWork" 😊
Couldn't you have uploaded before the Stringstorm debacle? Now I can't write the Lyrics of the song with a clear conscious. Also the thumbnail gives me some serious Code Geass vibes for some reason
Love the BT content! Please keep 'em coming. For those interested in learning more about the Lyran Commonwealth Mage Leader has a BT primer ep#29 on the Zeus mech & the myth of Lyran incompetence. Speaking of which the Zeus a lightweight Assault mech @ 80 tons is an extremely versatile & budget friendly (as far as bigger mechs go) mech commonly used amongst the Lyrans.
"Atlas Shrugged: Or How I Got Bored with War and Decided to Go Home" The best part about Lyrans is that, while many of their high-ranking officials are incompetent, the ones who _aren't_ are competent to a terrifying degree. Perfect example: Frederick Steiner, aka Anastasius Focht, who tried to overthrow Katrina, got caught out, was swnt to his death against the DCMS by Katrina, was captured by the Kuritans, got handed over to ComStar, became their Precentor Martial, and then proceeded to not only assassinate the current Primus for being an idiot, he then went on to utterly crush the Clan war machine underfoot and force a fifteen year ceasefire.
The Griffin RG is an interesting custom variant. The Royal Guard swapped out the PPC with a Large Laser, so you don't fry the whole room with the electric discharge. Also has several medium and small lasers with machine guns for easy crowd control. Found it in one of my old BATTLETECHNOLOGY magazines. Along with the mention of elite Lyran unit that had the notorious Atlas Scout lance. Had Star League tech in the mechs(ECM and Beagle probes and command consoles) and if the stealth option went south then utter destruction so no one could report their presence. Funny read on that one.
@sisireeni3435 Athens demanded support from the independent city. They refused. Athens sieges the city and wins. They then execute every man and have every single woman and child sold into slavery, and put 500 Athenian colonists in their place. Later, Sparta wins and gives the people back their city, though they were not in the best shape from then on.
@@Dogue83ah, I heard that he had done something bad, sexual-wise. In the first place: I hope he repents, and that he and his victim come to know the peace of God. In the second, I was saying the song was awesome. I wasn’t talking about the man himself.
Lyrans will reluctantly fund and field one or two light mechs if they are heavily armed enough to punch upward like a medium mech (Commando and Wolfhound, famously)
I would like to apologize for failing to mention some of the lighter mechs the Lyrans have actually come up with, such as the Commando. A small donation of ten million Cbills will be donated to the cause of rocketing Clanners into the nearest sun to atone for this.
Pancreas, the historic reference you're missing here is the Hanseatic League - super rich German merchant cities who were very powerful and, well, rich
"almost" is a good footnote; cuse the grey death legion started out as an Infantry batallion who would literally counter mechs; even ones specifically to counter them. honestly probobly my favorite merc band that started as boots on the ground to Mecha brawlers.
And even after they built up a sizable mech force, they still maintained terrifyingly effective anti-mech infantry. One of their favorite tactics was to toss a canvas satchel stuffed with high explosives into a mech's leg or ankle joint
As an austrian I might be biased but the whole Steiner Scout Lance just tickles my pickle in so many ways. Also thanks for the mental image of Steiner Oktoberfest! For some reason that thought never really crossed my mind and now I WANT IT!
Ha! Age of Empires gold mine. That looks familiar. 😎 Your rye commentary is perfect for the Lyrans. I like how they roll. No half messures. Get it done.
Quite interesting video, even live, so will it be possible to make this kind of video for factions from the reading of Fallout video games such as the Enclave in the future?
Personally, I like to think of the Lyrans as Imperial Germany in government and culture, Modern Germany in economics, and America in terms of fondness for all things big in for their military.
3 things: 1) Not all of the LC is German, only some of it. The Isle of Skye is mostly Scottish and the Tamar Pact is predominantly Scandinavian. 2) the Free Rasalhague Republic did not come from the LC it was former LC planets taken by the Draconis Combine. The DC lost the territory. The Rasalhague district gained independence from the DC in 3034 and the LC gave them some of the former district systems they had retaken from the DC in the 3rd & 4th Succession War. 3) The idea that the Lyrans only use Heavies and Assaults is also false, the light Commando is a signature Lyran design, as is the medium Hatchetman also the Gryphon is a Medium mech. There are a number of later light and med designs produced by them as well. Their units have a higher overall weight average, but they still use a wide variety of all size mechs.
While not their most iconic ‘Mech, the ‘Berserker’ probably embodies the Lyran Commonwealth the best. Not only is it a 100-tonner, not only does it have a gargantuan axe, but it has a *400 XL engine*, which makes its C-Bill cost comparable to Clan Omnimechs. Very good performance, and it’s undoubtedly the best melee ‘Mech in the setting in terms of raw damage output, but to say it’s prohibitively expensive is underselling it.
My favorite fact is that there are enough people in the Inner Sphere to have at least one person say the pun "we're Focht" after hearing about the Precentor.
Pancreas is talking about sci fi universes again, nice. Narrativly, anything past clan invasion tends to get wonky, but the constant progression of technology and expansion of the game's sand box makes it very fun to play.
The Lyrans don't actually build or use Atlases all that much, they prefer Defiance Industry's home grown Zeus Assault Mech instead. It isn't until the late Dark Age that they really start to use a lot more Atlases, and thats when they actually go broke , and more or less collapse as the state is bankrupt. Also because Davion moved to the Atlas 3. The two factions you're far more likely to run into with Atlases are Davion and Kurita. Davion, despite being poor actually builds by far the most amount of Atlases, to the point sometimes commission the Mariks and Stieners to build them Assault mechs that aren't the Atlas or the Victor. More than once, a Davion Battlemaster only gets to be a Davion Battlemaster, because someone rich in the FedSuns bought and paid to have that mech built and transported to them. Kurita also builds a lot of Atlases, mostly so they can match Davion. Marik is 3rd place, they use the Atlas a bit, but also just like to sell them to Kurita and Davion. Lyrans are 4th, because The Zeus is cheaper, home grown, far easier to repair and maintain, and because Defiance wouldn't like it if their revenue got cut off so they tend to bribe anyone even thinking of switching out of a Zeus. Liao is last, mostly because any Atlas they have was formerly a Davion or Marik Atlas, that got spray panted green, and is held together by duct tape. And in later Eras, they get the Highlander back. Also the Catgirl isn't actually a real catgirl, she was a Sex slave that got turned into a Cyborg, with Cat-like parts to attract customers. Also there was only ever one in the offical art, and the memes made sure FASA/WizKids/CGL will never do more. Genetic Engineering is very very looked down upon in the Inner Sphere, even before the Furries poisoned that well further. Anyone even thinking of attempting stuff like that would be torn apart by an angry mob, especially in Canopus, because they actually have a significant amount of Puritans still around. Canopus is Space Bangkok/Vegas/Shanghai all in one with Jamaican flavor. And like those places, its a decent place to visit, but god you wouldnt want to ever live there. Keep in mind, Cyborgs in this setting aren't Cyberpunk Cyborgs, they are Shadow Run cyborgs (which makes sense since CGL owns both) so they are probably also crazy. See the Blakists if you want proof. You werent really kidding, LOKI is basically the SS. Even with Ethnic purging including. Especially on former FWL worlds. Or Rim Worlds. Or the few times they had Kuritan worlds. They are like the FWL in that case, they are just a lot better at hiding it. Thanks to their SS ironically. The 10th Lyran Guards are an extremely prodigious unit, second only to the sometimes defunct 4th Lyran guards, and are an Elite level Regiment. The 1st Meanwhile was full of also good Mechwarriors, but had 0 political connections, so they slowly faded into the background before being destroyed in the Clan Invasion. The plot gets a lot better during the later half of the Dark Age, and even in the IllKlan age (if you ignore the Clans, and stick with House focused stories). Thats also because CGL got the rights back. The downside is Clan Wolf still exists, and any plot they touch turns into hot garbage fast. That is a major downside. Incest isnt just uncommon in the Clans, it is expected (even among the Civilian casts (Hello Diana Pryde)). Also yes, Alaric was Trueborn, not a Freebirth. The only problems the Clans would have is he isnt actually a Ward, not that his Mother and Father were Sibilings. Its legitimately encouraged for Clanners to fuck their genetic siblings, or SibCo members. Its also expected and encouraged for them to kill eachother. Also they were literally written to be the Alien badguys for Battletech, and that hasnt changed. Even in modern writing, them being the bad guys is still the same. So is the Incest.
In the Battletech Universe, there are usually three ways to deal with a problem... 1)the right way. 2) the wrong way. 3) the House Steiner way, which is almost always the wrong way, but it involves Assault Mechs.😁