In a few days, BattleTech fans will finally get to read Ghosts of Timkovichi, an important book for fans of the Kell Hounds, the Lyran Commonwealth, or the Jade Falcons. For fans tracking the various battles and conflicts during the Dark Age, when that sort of thing might not have been so easy, hearing “Timkovichi” is enough to send a shiver down their spine.
For those who don’t know Timkovichi’s significance and its place in BattleTech history, I thought it would be nice to put it all in one place before the book came out. It’s never been dramatized in fiction, though it’s been mentioned or hinted at in at least a few places. A Bonfire of Worlds, Elements of Treason: Honor, and Honor’s Gauntlet have all referenced the atrocities committed on Timkovichi, and what it cost the Kell Hounds, the Lyrans, and even the Hell’s Horses. That battle served as a turning point for Malvina Hazen’s Jade Falcons, showing the lengths of brutality they would go to in pursuit of victory.
The precious few who survived that harrowing conflict were scarred, forever changed in ways that are hard to express. Ghosts of Timkovichi seeks to grapple with a bit of that for some of those survivors.
The year was 3142, and Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon were pressing toward Tharkad, both seeking a path toward their eventual conquest of Terra. Malvina Hazen, Khan of the Jade Falcons, had established her Golden Ordun—an alliance between the Falcons and the Hell’s Horses—to strengthen her forces as she cut her bloody swath through the Lyran Commonwealth.
One of the Golden Ordun’s main adversaries, doing their damnedest to prevent the Clans from pressing further into Lyran territory, were the Kell Hounds. On Tharkad that Colonel Evan Kell made a stand against the Golden Ordun forces that brought their invasion to a standstill, frustrating Malvina to no end. Using hit and run tactics and utilizing the local militia, the Clan forces simply could not compete against the wily strategies of Evan Kell and his Kell Hounds.
Enraged by the hold-up of her campaign, Malvina Hazen ordered the death of the Kell Hounds by any means necessary. While the Kell Hounds were fully engaged with the Hell’s Horses Beta Galaxy at the town of Greywalk on Timkovichi, she ordered an orbital bombardment from the WarShip Red Talon, and watched as the Kell Hounds and her own Hell’s Horses allies were turned to slag and ash. The city of Greywalk was razed to the ground. There were few, if any, survivors—civilian, Kell Hounds, and Hell’s Horses alike.
The Jade Falcons counted the Kell Hounds as “annihilated,” which was a rare honor, using that word for a force not of the Clans. The Hell’s Horses Beta Galaxy was so devastated they were forced to rotate to the back of the invasion while other units took their place, but this was the beginning of the end of the Golden Ordun.
For many, this cold day in August became known as the day the Kell Hounds died. For Malvina Hazen, it was business as usual, and with her enemy disposed of, she proceeded with her invasion toward Tharkad, ignoring both the civilian cost and the cost to her allies.
For the Hell’s Horses, this single act on Timkovichi transformed her from a respected warrior to a warrior to be feared, and even hated. For the Jade Falcons, the unity of spirit behind the Mongol Doctrine began to fracture after this action and others like it during this offensive.
For the Kell Hounds themselves, they were harder to kill than that. Command fell to Evan Kell’s niece, Callandre Kell. She pieced together barely a battalion of surviving Kell Hounds, then went hunting for Jade Falcons, looking for revenge. As colonel of the remaining Kell Hounds, Callandre became a thorn in Malvina Hazen’s side and in return, Malvina torched the Kell homeworld of Arc-Royal in 3146. Her Jade Falcon forces killed Callandre’s father, Martin Kell, in that battle, leaving her the title of Grand Duchess of Arc-Royal and killing all the Kell Hound recruits and cadets training on the planet.
From that point, Malvina declared open season on any Kell Hounds her Falcons could find, and Callandre ordered her faithful Hounds into hiding until the time was right to reemerge. Most went with her. Others—like the Ghost Dogs, the Filibuster Brigade, and the Hellcats, to name a few—scattered across the Inner Sphere, inventing their own identities, rebuilding while waiting to come home when the time was right.
Those who stayed with Callandre followed her on her quest for vengeance. in 3151, they stopped on Timkovichi and dropped a memorial plinth at Greywalk, promising vengeance before taking Arc-Royal back from the Jade Falcons and establishing the Arc-Royal liberty coalition.
That is where Ghosts of Timkovichi begins. Callandre Kell has decided it’s time to exorcise the ghosts Timkovichi represents for the Kell Hounds, and she knows exactly who to send to do it.
See how it all plays out in Ghosts of Timkovichi when it comes out this Friday, May 15th.
You can read an excerpt at Tabletop Battles and another at sarna.net. If you want to catch up on the Ghost Dogs, you can still do that using this handy reading list. Find the trailer for the novel on the Catalyst Game Labs YouTube channel.
You can also preorder the book now!
- Bryan Young
