Janice Laidlaw

Janice Laidlaw
Character Profile
Affiliation ComStar
Profession Precentor ROM


History[edit]

Janice Laidlaw was appointed head of ROM after Michelle Dupreas resigned her position after Raymond Karpov presented his Organizational Edict 3056 in 2838.[1][2][3]

She was a staunch supporter of Karpov's policies, and she launched what would later be called Operation Holy Shroud, a massive five-year effort to kill over 300 of the best scientific minds in the Inner Sphere.[3]

She implemented all policies that Karnov proposed: not only she had ROM work to cripple the Great Houses' efforts at recovering LosTech, and opened up a fixed number of Acolyte positions to the scions of most powerful Inner Sphere families to gain detailed insights to the Great Houses' levels of technology.

Events such as the Veddar Affair led Karpov to formalize even more procedures. After Rosemary Veddar, a Lyran Commonwealth Loki agent, successfully infiltrated ComStar and remained undetected for three years, Primus Karpov responded with increasing ROM's almost all-pervasive powers to allow it to test current and potential members of the Order to prevent any further Great House spies. This was further aided when Karpov instituted a rotational posting system, with no ComStar personnel remaining at a given assignment or world for more than two years to prevent familiarity and make it impossible to infiltrate the Order.[4]

While his reformation of the Order's internal structure continued, external issues continued to haunt Karpov. While Operation Holy Shroud had succeeded beyond Karpov's wildest dream, it also unfortunately forced the Great Houses to end the Second Succession War in an effort to recover their strength. When Precentor ROM advised the First Circuit in 2866 that Inner Sphere would likely recover all lost technology within three decades if the present peace continued, Karpov reacted quickly. Following Conrad Toyama's efforts in the ComStar War to fan the conflicts between the Successor States, Karpov authorized ROM to filter information to the Lyran Commonwealth about the so-called Shadow War in the Draconis Combine between the Internal Security Force and Coordinator Miyogi Kurita. Just as Karpov had hoped, in typical Kurita fashion when Miyogi learned the Lyrans knew of the Shadow War the simmering tensions along the Combine-Commonwealth border exploded into open warfare again, touching off the Third Succession War. [5]

Despite Karpov's success in restarting the fighting and maintaining Blake's predictions about the eventual collapse of society through war, he had becoming increasingly disenchanted with the politics of the increasingly hostile First Circuit. With the liberals complaining about his somewhat draconian measures and the conservatives claiming he hadn't gone far enough, the despondent Primus simply stopped attending the meetings of the First Circuit for three months in 2874. By 2875 he had had enough, citing failing health. Karpov stepped down as Primus in favor of Precentor Arcturus Andrea Marteen, having named the more liberal Marteen several years earlier as a compromise with his critics. [6]


References[edit]

  1. ComStar, pp. 28-30 "The Consolidation Years - Karpov Ascendant - ComStar Strikes"
  2. ComStar, p. 28
  3. 3.0 3.1 ComStar, p. 29
  4. ComStar, p. 31
  5. ComStar, p. 32
  6. ComStar, p. 33

Bibliography[edit]