# Battletech and Me



## Calbeck (Jul 13, 2008)

Roy Calbeck is an anthro unicorn, and the only canon furry character in Battletech.

In 1993, then-President of FASA Sam Lewis asked me to write up a treatment for an Eridani Light Horse scenario pack. The history section to this project, never itself approved for publication, leaked to the Internet and became a fan favorite for ELH buffs, appearing on numerous fansites as though it were official material.

When WizKids took over the Battletech property in the aftermath of FASA's demise in 2000, they launched an official website called ClassicBattletech.com. In its very first version, the site published the ELH history I'd written as official: WizKids had adopted my material. Mind you, since they never had permission or a contract to use it, the act of adoption was also an act of piracy, but that's being handled elsewhere.

In this version of the ELH History (which as per standing FASA/WizKids policy, replaced the preceding versions in all points of difference), the Eridani Light Horse fought a massive battle against Clans Jade Falcon and Steel Viper on the world of Orkney in November 3051. In the process, the 71st Light Horse Regiment was wiped out with the sole exception of one man...Sergeant Roy Calbeck, platoon leader of four Pegasus-class scout tanks, which themselves had been destroyed trying to defend a forward medical station.

As sole survivor of the regiment, Roy was breveted to the position of Major (the lowest rank allowed to command such an organization) to serve as a legal placeholder so the unit would not have to be officially disbanded. The bereaved soldier was given indefinite leave to sort himself out, whereupon he immediately repaired to the nearest starport cantina and began trying to drink himself to death.

Three days into that binge, on the edge of complete internal organ failure, Major Calbeck reportedly vanished into thin air, in front of several witnesses.

That much is official canon. As the author of that canon, I can point out that this was only the start of Roy's adventures...before I even began writing this material for FASA, I'd adopted him as my online roleplaying persona, starting in 1991.

The upshot is that, as a matter of quantum irregularity, every universe has a set level of background energy that is commonly referred to as "mana". The multiverse is essentially glued together with the stuff, with each plane of existence "stuck" to the next with mana.  The amount, spread, and quality of mana differs between universes: in the Battletech milieu, it's so light as to be almost nonexistent, albeit spread very evenly.

In such a universe, study and implementation of magic is next to impossible. Only those with natural affinity for mana can harness it at all, and usually do so at the level of your average psychic. It's purely intuitive and limited in scope, taking someone who would naturally amount to a Merlin or Elminster in another universe to do anything truly miraculous with it.

Roy Calbeck, for the Battletech universe, is one of those one-in-a-billion types...and it took him getting so wasted he nearly died to trigger a desperate, subconscious reaction. Part of him still wanted to live.

That part tapped into the multiverse, found a link to the nearest multidimensional gateway (known to its patrons as the Past and Future Inn), and bodily dragged him there, using the newfound energy in that nexus to change his form into that of something which could handle the alcoholic poisons afflicting his body. Roy's platoon had belonged to the 71st Light Horse's 11th Recon Company, nicknamed "Macomber's Unicorns", and so his subconscious matched his new appearance to that of his unit mascot.

As an anthropomorphized unicorn, he was able to detoxify his system, recover, and have the time necessary to come to grips with his newly-discovered abilities.  In the first few hours of that process, he threw up on a dragon mage and then slept off his initial binge in a fish tank.

Since then, Roy has taken gratuituous advantage of his situation to travel the multiverse, initially with the idea of scouting out new technology to benefit the Eridani on his return. Still being on indefinite leave, and with the discovery that time spent outside his home universe didn't affect the passage of time there, he spent over a decade learning to control and refine his powers. He met new friends, allies and enemies, battled across dozens of realities, and amassed a pile of gold and other tradeable valuables for his ultimate return home.  He has been a Temporal Corps agent as well as a Gaming Guardian, and considers FurryMuck to be his home away from home.

Currently, negotiations with WizKids (with the helpful assistance of Battletech's current license owner Loren Coleman) continue. I intend to retain copyright to Roy regardless of all else, and at this point WizKids has agreed in principle that I should be allowed to create and have published the final version of the ELH History --- including my own original material, so long as the end result fits into the overall BT canon.  We shall see what we shall see...but don't be too surprised if a future Battletech product sports, somewhere in its pages, the image of a cigar-chomping unicorn riding in the open hatch of a hovertank on the move.


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