Before we speak of the Federated Suns and its forgotten children, we must speak of ourselves. The Order of the Open Book exists because ComStar failed — not once, but continuously, for centuries. We failed Jerome Blake. We failed humanity. And we failed the people of the Periphery March in ways that demand confession before we presume to document their history.
The official histories — both secular ComStar's sanitized version and the Word of Blake's mystical fever-dream — agree on precious little. But we have seen the original documents. Not the "Word of Blake" as published by Toyama's propagandists in 2820, but Blake's actual journals, his technical memoranda, his private correspondence.
Jerome Blake was not a prophet. He was an engineer.
He saw the Star League collapsing. He saw the Great Houses sharpening knives for each other's throats. He understood, with the cold clarity of a man who had spent his life maintaining the systems that bound civilization together, that the HPG network was the last thread holding humanity back from complete barbarism.
His plan was simple:
1. Preserve the HPG network at all costs
2. Maintain neutrality to ensure all parties had reason to protect ComStar
3. Safeguard technological knowledge until humanity was ready to rebuild
4. Eventually — and this is the part both factions conveniently forget — SHARE that knowledge freely
Blake wrote, in a memorandum dated October 2788: "We are librarians, not priests. Guardians, not gatekeepers. The knowledge we preserve belongs to humanity, not to us. Our task is to keep it safe until it can be returned to those who need it."
This document exists. ROM classified it EYES ONLY in 2847. We have made copies available through the usual channels.
Conrad Toyama was Blake's chosen successor, and history will never stop arguing about whether that choice was wisdom or madness. Toyama was brilliant, charismatic, and utterly convinced that humanity was too stupid to be trusted with its own knowledge.
Where Blake saw ComStar as temporary custodians, Toyama saw permanent priesthood. Where Blake imagined eventually reopening the libraries, Toyama built temples. The mysticism, the robes, the pseudo-religious hierarchy — none of it came from Blake. It came from Toyama's conviction that the masses needed religion more than they needed truth.
"Give them mystery," Toyama wrote in his own private journals, "and they will not ask for understanding."
For two centuries, ComStar followed Toyama's path. We became the thing Blake feared most: a power unto ourselves, hoarding knowledge not to protect it but to protect our monopoly on it.
And then there was ROM.
Blake created ROM in 2811 as a defensive measure — a counterintelligence service to prevent the Great Houses from stealing HPG technology or suborning ComStar personnel. A reasonable precaution in reasonable times.
What ROM became was something else entirely.
Under Primus Raymond Karpov and his successors, ROM transformed into an instrument of technological suppression. If a university recovered lostech, ROM arranged for the research to be stolen or destroyed. If an engineer came too close to rediscovering something dangerous — jump drives, advanced targeting systems, efficient fusion reactors — ROM arranged for that engineer to have an accident.
The Succession Wars did not destroy human knowledge. We did. ROM did. We made the darkness deeper and longer because we had convinced ourselves we were the only ones wise enough to hold the light.
[DECLASSIFIED ROM OPERATIONAL FILE]
OPERATION MIDNIGHT OIL
Authorization: Order of the Open Book
Original Classification: EYES ONLY / FIRST CIRCUIT
Operational Period: 2891-2894
Theater: Federated Suns / Crucis March
Objective: Suppress recovery of Star League-era manufacturing data
Summary: NAIS predecessor institution on New Avalon recovered partial schematics for Germanium-core JumpShip components. ROM SIGMA team inserted as visiting scholars. Over 34-month period, systematically corrupted research data, introduced calculation errors into foundational work, and arranged "laboratory accident" that killed lead researcher Dr. Yolanda Ferretti and three graduate students.
Result: SUCCESS. Research program abandoned. Surviving scholars transferred to unrelated fields.
Casualties: 4 civilian (acceptable)
Operational Security: MAINTAINED
We did this. Hundreds of times. Thousands. Every world that stayed poor, every colony that failed, every patient who died for lack of medical technology we were hoarding — that blood is on our hands.
Which brings us to the Periphery March, and to our specific sins against the people of Memphis, Sherwood, and Lackland.
ComStar first became aware of TriStar Interstellar's growing influence in the late 2990s. Our traffic analysis division — the branch that reads everyone's mail and pretends it doesn't — flagged unusual patterns in message routing through the Periphery March region. Someone was building an alternative communications network. Primitive, yes. Slow, certainly. But functional.
This could not be tolerated.
ROM opened Operation BURNING BRIDGE in 2998. The objective was simple: discredit TriStar leadership, disrupt their operations, and remind the Periphery March who controlled information in the Inner Sphere.
For over a decade, ROM agents spread disinformation, sabotaged cargo shipments, manipulated local media, and — when subtlety failed — arranged for more direct interventions. The operation culminated in 3010 with the deaths of Belasarius Starr, President of Memphis, and his wife Marlene Starr, CEO of TriStar Interstellar.
No formal charges were ever filed. The official cause of death was "shuttle malfunction."
[DECLASSIFIED ROM OPERATIONAL FILE]
OPERATION BURNING BRIDGE
Authorization: Order of the Open Book
Original Classification: EYES ONLY / PRIMUS
FINAL OPERATIONAL REPORT
Date: 14 March 3010
Primary Objectives:
1. Neutralize TriStar leadership — ACHIEVED
2. Discredit TriStar media operations — PARTIAL SUCCESS
3. Disrupt alternative communications development — FAILED
Assessment: Target elimination successful. However, subsequent analysis indicates operation may have been counterproductive to long-term objectives. TriStar corporate structure proved resilient. Successor leadership (see file: STAR, TENNESSEE) demonstrates continued commitment to organizational goals. Regional sympathy for TriStar increased following "accident."
Recommend: Continued monitoring. Further direct action inadvisable at this time.
We murdered them. Let there be no ambiguity. ComStar murdered Belasarius and Marlene Starr because they dared to build something outside our control.
And we failed anyway. Their son Tennessee grew up to found the Tennessee Star Guards. TriStar grew stronger. The Periphery March grew more independent. All we accomplished was to add two more names to the ledger of our sins.
In 3052, Primus Myndo Waterly launched Operation SCORPION — a deranged attempt to seize control of the Inner Sphere while the Clans kept everyone distracted. It failed catastrophically. Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht executed Waterly (though the official story claims she resigned and died of natural causes), and the great reform began.
Focht found Blake's original documents. The ones Toyama had suppressed. The ones that proved everything the Blessed Order had become was a betrayal of its founder's vision.
Some of us rejoiced. Finally, we could become what Blake intended.
Others — the faction that would become the Word of Blake — saw only heresy. They fled to the Free Worlds League, wrapped themselves in Toyama's mysticism, and eventually drowned the Inner Sphere in blood during the Jihad.
But here is the truth neither side wants to acknowledge: secular ComStar was not innocent either. Focht's reforms were real, but incomplete. We stopped actively suppressing technology, yes. We opened some archives. We tried to rebuild trust.
But we never confessed. We never opened the ROM files. We never told the families of our victims what we had done. We never told Memphis who killed the Starrs.
The Order of the Open Book exists because some of us could no longer bear the silence.
We are not heroes. We are not prophets. We are simply people who read too many files and could not forget what we learned.
The Periphery March deserves to have its history told by someone who will acknowledge the truth: that ComStar worked to keep them poor, that New Avalon abandoned them when conquest elsewhere seemed more profitable, that they built what they have in spite of the institutions that should have helped them.
We cannot undo what was done. We can only bear witness.
Read on.