Eventually, all factions within the Inner Sphere and Periphery had adopted to one degree or another a code of conduct called the Honors of War. Mercenaries were responsible for reviving the tradition of offering opponents the chance to surrender and pay a "ransom" so they could return home. Seeking to protect their livelihood, many mercenaries began using their contracts to police their employers, refusing to take missions which violated the Ares Conventions. Ironically, it was mercenaries who played a role in trying to save humanity from itself, though not necessarily out of noble purpose. ![]() ![]() In their quest to seize the throne of the Star League during the Succession Wars, the Great Houses abandoned the Ares Conventions and committed murder on an unimaginable scale, rendering whole worlds lifeless and erasing centuries of technological progression. Shortly after it started, the newly formed ComStar created the Mercenary Review Board, a neutral arbitrator for both mercenaries and employers alike. Those services were soon put to the test with the outbreak of the Succession Wars. Of those SLDF units which remained behind, many hired themselves out to whichever Great House was willing to pay the most for their services. Rather than try to reconstitute the League by force, Aleksandr Kerensky and nearly 80% of the surviving Star League Defense Force chose exile in 2784. ![]() That all changed after the Amaris Civil War. Mercenaries were still valuable as deniable assets in the Hidden Wars between the Great Houses, but there was little respect for the profession, with many units little more than fly-by-night operations. The Reunification War and the formation of the Star League brought about an age of relative peace, again decreasing the demand for hired guns. That changed in the twenty-third century as interstellar exploration and the rise of neo-feudalism created a demand for trained soldiers to fight in what became known as the Age of War. Mercenaries have played a role in the history of human warfare since the beginning, though there had been a general decline in their use towards end of the second millennium.
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