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Battletech Field Manual/Sourcebook
House Kurita: The Draconis Combine
On September 9, 2796, Coordinator Jinjiro Kurita, consumed with bloodlust, ordered his troops to slaughter the citizens of Kentares IV to the last man...
And Kurita became the most feared name in the Inner Sphere.
To control his people, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine must control their ideology. Thus, Draconis society's values are Harmony and Purity - Harmony with the interests and intentions of the Kurita state, and Purity from any thoughts that contradict those of the Coordinator.
Only the powerful, mystical society ComStar could compile this sourcebook on House Kurita and the Draconis Combine. Dozens of full-color illustrations depict famous personalities, scenes, and military ranks, decorations, and Insignia. Also included is Kurita history, from Shiro Kurita's bloody conquests while forging the Draconis Combine to Takashi Kurita's ruthless "justice." Every Combine 'Mech regiment from Rasalhague to Luthien is listed, along with the totalitarian government's structure, a description of the ISF (the Combine's secret police), and excerpts from the Dictum Honorium, which spells out the codes of conduct for Kurita citizens.
Threatening to devour both the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, the Dragon grows stronger and more fearsome. Every year brings the Draconis Combine closer to fulfilling its destiny of conquering the Inner Sphere.
And Kurita became the most feared name in the Inner Sphere.
To control his people, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine must control their ideology. Thus, Draconis society's values are Harmony and Purity - Harmony with the interests and intentions of the Kurita state, and Purity from any thoughts that contradict those of the Coordinator.
Only the powerful, mystical society ComStar could compile this sourcebook on House Kurita and the Draconis Combine. Dozens of full-color illustrations depict famous personalities, scenes, and military ranks, decorations, and Insignia. Also included is Kurita history, from Shiro Kurita's bloody conquests while forging the Draconis Combine to Takashi Kurita's ruthless "justice." Every Combine 'Mech regiment from Rasalhague to Luthien is listed, along with the totalitarian government's structure, a description of the ISF (the Combine's secret police), and excerpts from the Dictum Honorium, which spells out the codes of conduct for Kurita citizens.
Threatening to devour both the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, the Dragon grows stronger and more fearsome. Every year brings the Draconis Combine closer to fulfilling its destiny of conquering the Inner Sphere.
- GenresScience Fiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1987
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November 29, 2020
I have read a number of game sourcebooks over the years, but few of them compare to the way BattleTech has setup its books. This is the first sourcebook I've delved into for the game, but I believe its the second one published. This is the first of five in the series of House books published for the BattleTech setting, in this case they focus in on House Kurita, the ruling house of the Draconis Combine. The way they've laid out the book in terms of information for the setting reads like an extremely interesting history book and for that they have brought the setting into a realm of reading that is far more interesting compared with other books in other games that I have read.
I feel like a lot of other sourcebooks in other settings achieve similar goals, but when I've read those in the past they feel more like a generic information dump and focused more on "how to use this information in your game." BattleTech books don't seem to work that way. These books are written for use in the game, sure, but they are written from the perspective of a ComStar report within the game setting itself. So, in that regard there is very little "how to use this in your game" type of information. Instead, it is laid out like an abridged historical mock-up for someone who wants to know a little bit about the Draconis Combine, rather than someone who will be using this information directly in a game setting. I really think that this approach has made the book far more readable. I found myself some evenings just wanting to find out what happened next! I can't remember ever having that feeling reading any other game book.
If anyone wants to delve into these books in more modern times, you have to remember these original House books were published in the 80's and with that in mind there's quite a few faux pas that happen. Terminology that was acceptable then may not be acceptable now. For example writing about someone's "oriental eyes" might not go over so well today. In the updated sourcebooks this type of language seems to have been removed, which definitely shows BattleTech will be updating and modernizing its sourcebooks. This book is the original basis for the Handbook: House Kurita published many years later.
If you compare the original art from 1987 with the art from the 2015 book... wow is it quite different. It's not that the art in this book is terrible, but it goes to show how much things have advanced with computer based tools, of which there is almost none in the 1987 books. Even the ideas of what people would wear in the future is so drastically different in the 80's. This is true, almost across the board, in sci-fi. Just watch what people think people wear in Season 1 of Star Trek: TNG versus Season 2. The projected idea of how people would dress was a pretty big difference, so the entire art direction of things like BattleTech has been overhauled quite a bit over the decades it has existed.
One thing I was not expecting about this book was for the history of House Kurita to start at the beginning. I really thought it would focus on a little bit before The Fourth Succession War era to somewhere in 3025. But instead the history starts a little after the year 2000. I wasn't expecting that, but I loved it. Reading about the technological development of BattleTech up to and past the Star League was really fascinating reading and seeing how the name Kurita shaped things up to the modern era of BattleTech was really interesting to read about. I don't know if the modern House Handbooks dive that deep into the background, but it would be a shame if they leave out these kinds of really interesting details.
I actually wish I had read a book like this before I launched into the novels. Books like Decision at Thunder Rift would have made a lot more sense had I walked in with this kind of information about the Draconis Combine. Basically, "Decision at Thunder Rift" threw us into the setting and my take away was that the Draconis Combine would be the bad guys in this setting. Having such a robust history under my belt would have made that book a lot more meaningful and I suspect William H. Keith Jr. had a lot of this information available to him. It's strange because "Decision at Thunder Rift" was published before the first House books and, to be honest, the background material available in Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat 2nd Edition was definitely not sufficient to get you ready for full novels, so anyone else reading the early BattleTech books when they came out would have been somewhat confused too.
BattleTech basically takes medieval culture (from all parts of the world) and pretty much transports it into a high tech world of the 31st century. Now, this certainly creates an interesting setting, but some of the initial goals I read from when they created this might not have exactly been achieved. In the case of the Draconis Combine they are basically reviving the era of Imperial Japan on a galactic scale. Now, the intention, or so I've come to understand it was to make a "gray" setting where no one group was clearly the bad guys or good guys, kind of like we experience in real life. However, the way they set this up is that the Draconis Combine basically functions like modern North Korea. They are heavily isolated, they are obsessed with their leader, and they have a lot of resource problems due to their isolation and mistrust of every other nation around them. The Draconis Combine has further problems because their population is terrified to speak out against their leaders and executions seem to have been a common occurrence in its history. Just because their population has been subjugated and brainwashed into blindly following their leader for the past few hundred years, doesn't make the Draconis Combine much of a "gray" area for me. To me, I would think they'd be the clear enemy, especially with the way they ruthlessly attack their perceived enemies, which is essentially anyone not from the Draconis Combine. Yes, on an individual basis, the gray area is certainly there, but on a nation basis, not so much.
On the one hand I think it's sort of cool that they've revived medieval Japan in a sci-fi setting, and I can understand why they would skip over just making this kind of setting Communist Russia, because that would have been very cliché in the 80's as that was such a common trope for decades already. On the other hand the best "gray" area comes from places like House Davion or House Steiner, who basically represent North America and Europe as far as I can tell. Meanwhile, House Liao, which basically represents China is also run by a crazy leader and thus the Capellan's are living in a dysfunctional society as well. It's not like medieval Europe was all that functional by comparison... ah well... just what I was thinking as I read through these books. I think they did a much better job setting the Capellan's on a bit more of gray area footing with Steiner and Davion though, it's not nearly as stark as the Kurita family.
The one thing I think they did right in trying to blur the lines is that as humanity expanded into different areas of space it really became a much more multicultural system. Sure some worlds favor one culture over others, but all kinds of people settled in various regions of space and some of those worlds wound up in the Draconis Combine or the Federated Suns, etc., so no one House really has a single culture under its rule. For example, the Draconis Combine has a world where Northern Europeans settled and the dominant culture there is similar to that. However, the dominant culture in the government that rules over that world is Japanese, so it creates for some very interesting dynamics within each overarching government.
In the end, I really enjoyed reading this book and the setting is highly complex, which they tried painstakingly to make as reasonably realistic as possible. It's not perfect, but few things this complex ever are, especially when you're literally making up the history as you go and you want to interconnect that with several other moving histories at the same time? I can't even begin to imagine the undertaking. In the end, I can't wait to read the other House books, because I'm sure that will just make the novels even more meaningful for me to read.
I feel like a lot of other sourcebooks in other settings achieve similar goals, but when I've read those in the past they feel more like a generic information dump and focused more on "how to use this information in your game." BattleTech books don't seem to work that way. These books are written for use in the game, sure, but they are written from the perspective of a ComStar report within the game setting itself. So, in that regard there is very little "how to use this in your game" type of information. Instead, it is laid out like an abridged historical mock-up for someone who wants to know a little bit about the Draconis Combine, rather than someone who will be using this information directly in a game setting. I really think that this approach has made the book far more readable. I found myself some evenings just wanting to find out what happened next! I can't remember ever having that feeling reading any other game book.
If anyone wants to delve into these books in more modern times, you have to remember these original House books were published in the 80's and with that in mind there's quite a few faux pas that happen. Terminology that was acceptable then may not be acceptable now. For example writing about someone's "oriental eyes" might not go over so well today. In the updated sourcebooks this type of language seems to have been removed, which definitely shows BattleTech will be updating and modernizing its sourcebooks. This book is the original basis for the Handbook: House Kurita published many years later.
If you compare the original art from 1987 with the art from the 2015 book... wow is it quite different. It's not that the art in this book is terrible, but it goes to show how much things have advanced with computer based tools, of which there is almost none in the 1987 books. Even the ideas of what people would wear in the future is so drastically different in the 80's. This is true, almost across the board, in sci-fi. Just watch what people think people wear in Season 1 of Star Trek: TNG versus Season 2. The projected idea of how people would dress was a pretty big difference, so the entire art direction of things like BattleTech has been overhauled quite a bit over the decades it has existed.
One thing I was not expecting about this book was for the history of House Kurita to start at the beginning. I really thought it would focus on a little bit before The Fourth Succession War era to somewhere in 3025. But instead the history starts a little after the year 2000. I wasn't expecting that, but I loved it. Reading about the technological development of BattleTech up to and past the Star League was really fascinating reading and seeing how the name Kurita shaped things up to the modern era of BattleTech was really interesting to read about. I don't know if the modern House Handbooks dive that deep into the background, but it would be a shame if they leave out these kinds of really interesting details.
I actually wish I had read a book like this before I launched into the novels. Books like Decision at Thunder Rift would have made a lot more sense had I walked in with this kind of information about the Draconis Combine. Basically, "Decision at Thunder Rift" threw us into the setting and my take away was that the Draconis Combine would be the bad guys in this setting. Having such a robust history under my belt would have made that book a lot more meaningful and I suspect William H. Keith Jr. had a lot of this information available to him. It's strange because "Decision at Thunder Rift" was published before the first House books and, to be honest, the background material available in Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat 2nd Edition was definitely not sufficient to get you ready for full novels, so anyone else reading the early BattleTech books when they came out would have been somewhat confused too.
BattleTech basically takes medieval culture (from all parts of the world) and pretty much transports it into a high tech world of the 31st century. Now, this certainly creates an interesting setting, but some of the initial goals I read from when they created this might not have exactly been achieved. In the case of the Draconis Combine they are basically reviving the era of Imperial Japan on a galactic scale. Now, the intention, or so I've come to understand it was to make a "gray" setting where no one group was clearly the bad guys or good guys, kind of like we experience in real life. However, the way they set this up is that the Draconis Combine basically functions like modern North Korea. They are heavily isolated, they are obsessed with their leader, and they have a lot of resource problems due to their isolation and mistrust of every other nation around them. The Draconis Combine has further problems because their population is terrified to speak out against their leaders and executions seem to have been a common occurrence in its history. Just because their population has been subjugated and brainwashed into blindly following their leader for the past few hundred years, doesn't make the Draconis Combine much of a "gray" area for me. To me, I would think they'd be the clear enemy, especially with the way they ruthlessly attack their perceived enemies, which is essentially anyone not from the Draconis Combine. Yes, on an individual basis, the gray area is certainly there, but on a nation basis, not so much.
On the one hand I think it's sort of cool that they've revived medieval Japan in a sci-fi setting, and I can understand why they would skip over just making this kind of setting Communist Russia, because that would have been very cliché in the 80's as that was such a common trope for decades already. On the other hand the best "gray" area comes from places like House Davion or House Steiner, who basically represent North America and Europe as far as I can tell. Meanwhile, House Liao, which basically represents China is also run by a crazy leader and thus the Capellan's are living in a dysfunctional society as well. It's not like medieval Europe was all that functional by comparison... ah well... just what I was thinking as I read through these books. I think they did a much better job setting the Capellan's on a bit more of gray area footing with Steiner and Davion though, it's not nearly as stark as the Kurita family.
The one thing I think they did right in trying to blur the lines is that as humanity expanded into different areas of space it really became a much more multicultural system. Sure some worlds favor one culture over others, but all kinds of people settled in various regions of space and some of those worlds wound up in the Draconis Combine or the Federated Suns, etc., so no one House really has a single culture under its rule. For example, the Draconis Combine has a world where Northern Europeans settled and the dominant culture there is similar to that. However, the dominant culture in the government that rules over that world is Japanese, so it creates for some very interesting dynamics within each overarching government.
In the end, I really enjoyed reading this book and the setting is highly complex, which they tried painstakingly to make as reasonably realistic as possible. It's not perfect, but few things this complex ever are, especially when you're literally making up the history as you go and you want to interconnect that with several other moving histories at the same time? I can't even begin to imagine the undertaking. In the end, I can't wait to read the other House books, because I'm sure that will just make the novels even more meaningful for me to read.
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