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Description
The Fourth Succession War virtually destroyed the Capellan Confederation. The Liao state was dissolved by half; Tikonov their prize factory world became first an independent nation, and then joined ranks with their bitterest enemy, House Davion. If that was not bad enough, St. Ives did the same with one member of the ruling council of Liao. To rub salt into the wound, said member, one Candice Liao, married Federated Suns Agent Justin Xiang Allard. With this, they created the St. Ives Compact and got Davion backing.

With traitors all around him, failures unmissable, and his nation in ruins, Maximillian Liao went insane and committed suicide. However, despite these colossal drawbacks, many Liao loyalists believed that one day they would return to glory. It would be years before that happened, nether the less, what was left of the Capellan Confederation started to (try) rebuild its military.

One such group, Hellespont Industrials, started to try and build mechs. Given a vast ammount of the scant resources the Capellan government had, they set to work on building various machines that could one day regain the glory of the Confederation. However imagination and reality are two different things, and it showed in the machines they made.

One of these machines that reflect that black and white reality is the Lei-Gong (Chinese God of Thunder). The machine was scratched built with technology gained from the Helm Memory Core, but with the scantness of resources, the Lei-Gong was made the best available. The original idea was a machine with two ER PPCs, LRM 20, medium lasers, jumpjets and good armour.

The reailty was compromise and luck. The PPCs they got were the snub nose variety that had shorter range and a greater particle scattering effect; a MRM-10 with two tons of ammo was installed which at best could fire dumb rockets at many ranges and was easier to repair – but nowhere as accurate compared to more sophisticated LRM Systems.

An RAC- Five was added to give it more fighting power with two tons of ammo but located in a large ammo bin on the arm made it very vunerable to munition explosions, thus its name earning an unintended irony. Instead of a complicated battlefist, a retractable blade was installed. To compensate for the lack of jump jets, a MASC system was fitted. To prevent the overheating, 14 heatsinks were added. All this cost the Lei-Gong armour – it just had 7 tons of it.

The mech had mixed results but House Liao despite the leaderships it had, could not be fussy. This was a superb machine compared to the vehicles the Periphery made. By FedCom and Marik standards, it was a joke, but the Capellans had hopes.

It was to come in two unexpected stages – the bitter feud in the Federated Commonwealth that saw the sudden promotion to the First Star Lord of Sun-Tzu Liao. The second wa the discovery of Thomas Marik’s son dying and being replaced with a double thus provoking the Free Worlds League to attack the FedCom alliance. With these events, Sun-Tzu used his built up resources and opportunites to regain Tikonov and St. Ives – the Lei-Gong fought as well as it could and in effect was an inferior machine to what the FedCom allied worlds had, but it was down to luck, chance, and opportunity that turned the tide for the Liaos.

The Confederation is back to its strenghts and the Lei-Gong is credited as part of its success due to its pilots’ drive to restore the Confederation. A reflection of the spirit of House Liao.

Credit and thanks to for the description!
Made with Inkscape.

Description
The Fourth Succession War virtually destroyed the Capellan Confederation. The Liao state was dissolved by half; Tikonov their prize factory world became first an independent nation, and then joined ranks with their bitterest enemy, House Davion. If that was not bad enough, St. Ives did the same with one member of the ruling council of Liao. To rub salt into the wound, said member, one Candice Liao, married Federated Suns Agent Justin Xiang Allard. With this, they created the St. Ives Compact and got Davion backing.

With traitors all around him, failures unmissable, and his nation in ruins, Maximillian Liao went insane and committed suicide. However, despite these colossal drawbacks, many Liao loyalists believed that one day they would return to glory. It would be years before that happened, nether the less, what was left of the Capellan Confederation started to (try) rebuild its military.

One such group, Hellespont Industrials, started to try and build mechs. Given a vast ammount of the scant resources the Capellan government had, they set to work on building various machines that could one day regain the glory of the Confederation. However imagination and reality are two different things, and it showed in the machines they made.

One of these machines that reflect that black and white reality is the Lei-Gong (Chinese God of Thunder). The machine was scratched built with technology gained from the Helm Memory Core, but with the scantness of resources, the Lei-Gong was made the best available. The original idea was a machine with two ER PPCs, LRM 20, medium lasers, jumpjets and good armour.

The reailty was compromise and luck. The PPCs they got were the snub nose variety that had shorter range and a greater particle scattering effect; a MRM-10 with two tons of ammo was installed which at best could fire dumb rockets at many ranges and was easier to repair – but nowhere as accurate compared to more sophisticated LRM Systems.

An RAC- Five was added to give it more fighting power with two tons of ammo but located in a large ammo bin on the arm made it very vunerable to munition explosions, thus its name earning an unintended irony. Instead of a complicated battlefist, a retractable blade was installed. To compensate for the lack of jump jets, a MASC system was fitted. To prevent the overheating, 14 heatsinks were added. All this cost the Lei-Gong armour – it just had 7 tons of it.

The mech had mixed results but House Liao despite the leaderships it had, could not be fussy. This was a superb machine compared to the vehicles the Periphery made. By FedCom and Marik standards, it was a joke, but the Capellans had hopes.

It was to come in two unexpected stages – the bitter feud in the Federated Commonwealth that saw the sudden promotion to the First Star Lord of Sun-Tzu Liao. The second wa the discovery of Thomas Marik’s son dying and being replaced with a double thus provoking the Free Worlds League to attack the FedCom alliance. With these events, Sun-Tzu used his built up resources and opportunites to regain Tikonov and St. Ives – the Lei-Gong fought as well as it could and in effect was an inferior machine to what the FedCom allied worlds had, but it was down to luck, chance, and opportunity that turned the tide for the Liaos.

The Confederation is back to its strenghts and the Lei-Gong is credited as part of its success due to its pilots’ drive to restore the Confederation. A reflection of the spirit of House Liao.

Credit and thanks to for the description!
Made with Inkscape.