Sarna

Sarna
← 3135 3151
Sarna nearby systems (Map Legend)
System Information
X:Y Coordinates	55.009 : -154.88
Spectral class	F8IV
Recharge time	179 hours
Recharge station(s)	Zenith, Nadir
Planet(s)	3

The Sarna system was home to at least one habitable world and as of 3151 was located in the Sarna Commonality of the Capellan Confederation.

System Description

Sarna is located near the Sarmaxa and Quemoy systems and is Rimward from Terra.

System History

The Sarna system was colonized at some time prior to 2176.

Political Affiliation

• 2176 - Sarna Supremacy
• 2366 - Capellan Confederation
• 2571 - Capellan Confederation
• 2750 - Capellan Confederation
• 2822 - Capellan Confederation
• 2864 - Capellan Confederation
• 3025 - Capellan Confederation
• 3030 - Federated Suns
• 3050 - Federated Commonwealth
• 3056 - Federated Commonwealth
• 3057 - Sarna Supremacy
• 3058 - Sarna Supremacy
• 3066 - Capellan Confederation
• 3067 - Capellan Confederation
• 3085 - Capellan Confeceration
• 3130 - Capellan Confederation
• 3145 - Capellan Confederation
• 3151 - Capellan Confederation

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Sarna III

Sarna III
Astrophysical
System position	Third
Jump Point distance	12.01 days
Moons	1 (Grace)
Geophysical
Surface gravity	1.03
Atmospheric pressure	Standard (Breathable)
Equatorial temperature	41°C (Very Hot)
Surface water	70%
Highest native life	Reptile
Landmasses	5 (Borah, Canoshal, Jacarlos, Oahu, Yanti)
History and Culture
Demonym(s)	Sarn
Population	"Nine billion" (1st Succession War), 2,618,000,000 (3025), "Two billion" (3029), 3,534,000,000 (3067), 3,034,000,000 (3079)
Government and Infrastructure
Noble Ruler	Duke of Sarna Mandrinn of Sarna
Political Leader	Premier of the Sarna Supremacy Diem of Sarna Planetary Governor
Military Commander	Gregory Wolff (3111)
Capital	Sarna
HPG Class	A (3067–3079)
HPG Representative	Precentor Charlemagne Sarat (3025)

Sarna III, or simply Sarna, has been an important political, industrial and logistical world to the Capellan Confederation since its inception. It has a dense population spread across five mountainous heavily industrialized continents. The other seventy percent of the planet is deep saltwater oceans. It has aerospace and DropShip manufacturing facilities, several commercial spaceports, and over a dozen major cities. The planet is orbited by a single moon named Grace. During the Chaos March period, most of Sarna's food was imported from nearby Kaifeng, while Sakhalin's minerals fed industry here.

Planetary History

Sarna Supremacy

In 2176, Sarna was the site of the founding of the Sarna Supremacy, the first interstellar nation to form in the Capellan Zone. It was a party of explorers from Sarna who first made contact with the Capellan Holdfast in 2194, established by Jurdan Aris after his flight from the Terran Alliance, although their demand that Capella join the Supremacy was robustly rejected.

Capellan Confederation

Later, in 2367, the Sarna system was under the control of the fledgling Capellan Confederation. It would remain a Capellan world through 3025.

Fourth Succession War

Sarna was targeted for invasion in 3029 as a part of Operation RAT by the Capellan Operations Command, the AFFS high command in the Capellan March of the Federated Suns. The invasion force consisted of the elite Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers RCT, the two regiments of the Crater Cobras mercenary command, and the Second Screaming Eagles, plus some fifteen assorted conventional regiments. The capture of Sarna was intended to serve several purposes; the COC were keen to impress First Prince Hanse Davion with their initiative, due to their perception of the Prince being largely unimpressed by the COC up to that point in the war; Sarna was also believed to be ideally located to act as a logistics center and jumping-off point for future invasion waves.

Unfortunately for the Federated Suns forces, their information on the military defenses on Sarna was six months out of date. Sarna was a tricky target to begin with; although Operation RAT was proving to be a great success, Sarna was still three jumps from the front lines, and would require the invasion forces to stop and recharge twice in barren systems. Sarna also held little military value beyond being the administrative capital of the Sarna Commonality, and the COC didn't count on the rash actions of the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers, who were angry over being left out of the earlier stages of Operation RAT and who were increasingly obsessed with exacting vengeance on the Capellan Confederation for the execution of Duke Michael Hasek-Davion by Chancellor Maximilian Liao earlier in the war.

Sarna had diminished in importance during the Succession Wars as its industry and population dwindled, and at the time of the invasion, the population numbered a mere two billion, compared to the nine billion residents at the height of the Star League era. The Cobras and the other elements of the invasion forces based their initial drop zones on the information available, which indicated that only two of the five continents on Sarna—Jacarlos and Canoshal—were of any military importance, due largely to the bulk of Sarna's remaining industries being located on those two continents. At the time of the invasion the weather on both continents was hot and humid, and the marshes on Jacarlos had become pits occupied by predatory reptiles and hungry insects. The Cobras were assigned two drop zones, codenamed "Nova" and "Supernova"; Nova was a drop zone on Canoshal, near Nito City and a major communications area, while Supernova was close to the eastern coastal mountains on Jacarlos close to Canoshal. The Supernova drop zone was intended to place the Cobras south of the city of Catalonia and near Svoboda, an industrial center. The Screaming Eagles were assigned a drop zone named "Blackhole" near the city of Backtal, north of Nova on Canoshal, while the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers were assigned their requested target: Drop Zone "Pulsar," close to Sarna, the planetary capital city.

The attack on Sarna began inauspiciously when the Invader-class JumpShip FSS Nigel suffered a jump drive failure in the second barren system the invasion force were navigating en route to Sarna. The DropShips transported by the Nigel had to be reassigned to other JumpShips, and engineers from other vessels transferred to the Nigel to help with repairs. The invasion force pressed on towards Sarna, leaving the Nigel behind to catch up later, and didn't learn until months later that the Nigel was lost in an explosion that killed all those still aboard her.

After arriving in the Sarna system, the aggressive behavior of General Gordon Hartstone, the combat commander of the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers, combined with a lack of military intelligence about the garrison on the planet cost the invading Federated Suns forces dearly. Hartstone had his DropShips accelerate towards Sarna at high speed, faster than the DropShips transporting the other forces, intent on arriving two days early and thereby giving his Fusiliers the chance to make their mark in the invasion. What the invasion forces were unaware of was that all four regiments of McCarron's Armored Cavalry were on Sarna, and the Fusiliers dropped in their midst. The initial landing zone was intended to be just north of the Gray River, but the proposed landing site proved untenable due to heavy mud and floodwater left over from local flooding, forcing the Fusiliers' DropShips to ground on higher ground to the northwest. As the Fusiliers deployed, the empty DropShips in orbit detected more than a hundred aerospace fighters converging on the Fusiliers position, forcing the DropShips in orbit to land on Sarna after destroying the defending AFFS aerospace fighters. The Capellan fighters then began an intense strafing and bombing campaign, savaging the Fusiliers attached aerospace wing and ground forces. The Second and Third Battalions of the Fusiliers were subjected to intense fighter attack with heavy casualties, while the First Battalion was harassed by fast-moving Savannah Master hovercraft. Even with supporting fire from the grounded DropShips, the Fusiliers losses were catastrophic; after shattering the three 'Mech battalions with aerospace forces and ambushes and leaving just a company of Fusilier 'Mechs fleeing into deep forest under the cover of forest fires behind them, the Big Mac used their aerospace fighters to destroy the bulk of the Fusiliers ten supporting regiments, with just two regiments surviving. Ten of the twenty DropShips that transported the conventional forces to Sarna were destroyed; the crews of six of the destroyed DropShips—the FSS Calona, FSS Deborah, FSS Hasek, FSS Haversham, FSS Minos, and FSS Parker—could have survived if they had abandoned the Fusiliers, but instead chose to fight until destroyed.

The Crater Cobras and the Screaming Eagles were still on approach to Sarna when the Fusiliers were destroyed, and were faced with an invidious choice; Sarna was obviously a brutal trap, but aborting the invasion would leave them in breach of contract, as the conquest of Sarna was specifically spelled out in their contracts. The commanding officers of the three regiments decided to press ahead with the invasion, but to alter the plans given to them by the COC in the hope that they could hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. All three regiments dropped at the Blackhole DZ, 200 km away from where the Big Mac had destroyed the Fusiliers, after their DropShips made multiple in-flight course corrections to confuse the Big Mac's fighters. The drop was successful, with the mercenaries arriving on Sarna on the 29th of May and swiftly destroying the local militia forces near Backtal, securing the landing zone to enable their attached conventional forces to deploy. Narrowly avoiding a hidden minefield, Westrick's Black Cobras secured a weapons factory near Backtal after surprising the defending militia forces before the munitions stored there could be destroyed. Fighters from the Big Mac subsequently destroyed the factory complex, but not before the Black Cobras had secured significant quantities of autocannon ammunition and vibrabombs.

With ComStar enacting a communications interdiction in response to the invasion of Sarna, the other DropShips and JumpShips in the system that had transported the invasion force acted on the last messages they received—messages sent by Hartstone when he thought that everything was proceeding according to plan—releasing these JumpShips to leave the Sarna system for other assignments, leaving the mercenaries unsupported. The Big Mac, believing that the mercenary drop was a decoy intended to lure them away from the capital, maintained a cautious defense until August, when it became apparent that the mercenaries were unsupported. In late August the four regiments of the Big Mac arrived near Backtal, where the Cobras and Eagles had been nervously awaiting a rapid demise; with the Big Mac finally attacking, the two mercenary commands elected to make their last stand in a region known as Graves Hollow, a forested valley some twenty kilometers in length, with numerous locations where strongholds could be fashioned or ambushes launched.

The Black Cobras were the first unit to engage the Big Mac, battling the Third McCarron's Armored Cavalry after the Third stumbled across the defensive positions put in place by the Second Capac Infantry regiment. Colonel Westrick moved his forces swiftly along two parallel roads before dispersing them into the woods when the Third noticed them, turning the battle into a deadly free-for-all amidst the forest, where the two 'Mech forces fought amidst the huge trunks of the Saman Pine trees. Westrick's tactics allowed the Black Cobras to hold out long enough for the First Kluane Assault Tank Battalion to join the fray, with the Demolishers and Manticores of the First persuading Colonel Linda Chandrasekar of the Third to order her regiment to retreat.

The battle fought by the Black Cobras was the first of many to be fought between the mercenaries and the various Big Mac regiments, losing roughly a quarter of their forces by early December, whilst inflicting at least as much damage on the Big Mac; despite the lack of word from the COC, morale on the mercenary side was still high, until the Big Mac managed to slip through a lightly-guarded portion of the hollow to surround the mercenary forces. The Cobras and Eagles began what they thought would be the last battle, only to be saved by the appearance of more AFFS forces. Two of the premiere RCTs from the Davion Brigade of Guards, the Davion Heavy Guards and the Davion Light Guards, had arrived with no clear idea of the situation on Sarna until they received frantic messages from the mercenaries. The two Guards regiments skipped the usual planning stages for a drop and left their DropShips on the next orbit, a dangerous tactic that saw many of the Guards' 'Mechs scattered, but with the bulk of their strength behind the Big Mac regiments. With the Guards' conventional forces descending by DropShip, Colonel Archibald McCarron chose to save his regiments rather than try and finish the Cobras and the Eagles, staging a swift, fighting retreat against the vengeful Guards for several weeks before managing to reach his DropShips and escape, less a regiment's worth of 'Mechs and personnel.

Chaos March

The rise of the Chaos March in 3057 would bring about the rebirth of the Sarna Supremacy. During this time, most of Sarna's food was imported from nearby Kaifeng, while Sakhalin's minerals fed the world's industry.

The Jihad

Sarna weathered the Jihad in relatively good shape; the Tengo Aerospace and Asuncion Industries facilities escaped damage, and with both the Sarna Military Academy and the Duchy Regional Training Center continuing to operate, with more cadets from the RTC entering the frontline CCAF than had been the case at the end of the FedCom Civil War. The Asuncion Industries factory established at Gerriado on the Borah continent had been set up in 3074, at the height of the Jihad, producing RetroTech Wolverines as part of the drive to provide any form of equipment for the CCAF as it fought against threats to the Confederation. By 3079, the plant had been operating for five years, and with the Jihad winding down and a renewed focus in the CCAF on quality equipment, Asuncion were undergoing an internal evaluation on the profitability of the line as part of the decision-making process on whether to keep the plant operating in the future. In contrast, the Tengo Aerospace plant was not only continuing to operate around the clock producing a mix of aerospace fighters and DropShips, but was also rumored to be developing a new Q-ship variant of the venerable Mule to support future clandestine CCAF operations.

Military Deployment

2765

• Blandford's Grenadiers

2786

• Blandford’s Grenadiers

2821

• Blandford’s Grenadiers
• Second "Glasgow" Lancers

2830

• Blandford's Grenadiers

3029

• Sarna Militia
• McCarron's Armored Cavalry

3050

207th Division

3050–3054

3rd FedCom RCT

3054–3079

Sarna Martial Academy Cadre (1 Battalion)

3058

Sarna Martial Academy Cadre (2 Battalions)

Grim Determination

3067

Shin Legion

3085

• Prefectorate Guard

- At this point in time, the unit was at 85% of full strength with an "A" equipment rating

3145

• Prefectorate Guard

- At this point in time, the unit was at 100% of full strength with an "A" equipment rating

• Sarna Martial Academy Cadre

- At this point in time, the unit was at 100% of full strength with an "F" equipment rating

Geography

Apocryphal Content Starts

The information after this notice comes from apocryphal sources; the canonicity of such information is uncertain.
Please view the reference page for information regarding their canonicity.

In the MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries Kestrel Lancers Missions, Sarna is depicted three times as a jungle swamp biome with good/reduced visibility, later features an arid canyon biome with reduced visibility, and finally a lush canyon biome with unlimited visibility.

Apocryphal Content Ends

Planetary Locations

• Backtal: a city located on Canoshal and site of the Tengo Aerospace manufacturing facilities on Sarna
• Bosporus: a city located on Jacarlos
• Catalonia: a city located on Jacarlos
• Gerriado: the location of the Asuncion Industries plant on Borah
• Graves Hollow: a twenty-kilometer, heavily wooded valley near Backtal on Canoshal; site of a major battle during the Fourth Succession War
• Gray River: a notable river on Jacarlos that runs close to the capital city, Sarna
• Moncona: a city located on Jacarlos
• New Hartford: a city
• Nito City: a city and important communications hub, located on Canoshal
• Oahu: a city located on the largest island in a small island chain east of Sarna and Svoboda, and south of Nito City
• Sarna: the planetary capital city, located on Jacarlos
• Sarna Martial Academy: a major military academy located in the planetary capital city, Sarna
• Salomek: a city located on Jacarlos
• Svoboda: a city located on Jacarlos and site of the Duchy RTC following the FedCom Civil War
• Vasola: a city located on Jacarlos

Companies and Industries

• Tengo Aerospace
• Asuncion Industries (from 3074)

Notes

Chaos March states the distance from the jump point to Sarna III takes 9 days and a recharge takes 6 days. This information became outdated with the release of Handbook: House Liao.

Nearby Systems

Closest 68 systems (67 within 60 light-years) Distance in light years, closest systems first:
Sarmaxa	8.7	Quemoy	11.1	Sakhalin	14.8	Bora	16.5
Ilmar	16.8	Kaifeng	17.0	Randar	22.0	No Return	22.5
Truth	23.7	Capella	24.2	Ulan Bator	24.6	Achilles	24.9
New Athens	25.4	Minnacora	27.3	Matsu	29.8	Palos	30.5
Heligoland	32.6	Aer	32.8	Menkib	33.0	Raballa	33.4
New Sagan	33.7	Geifer	35.9	Zaurak	36.2	Relevow	36.7
Wei	36.8	Aldertaine	37.6	Lhasa	38.2	Tsingtao	38.3
Corey	38.4	Yunnah	39.4	New Macao	39.6	Chitwan	40.3
Mandate	44.0	Second Try	44.2	Gei-Fu	44.3	Ares	44.7
Chamdo	44.8	Remshield	45.0	Capricorn	45.3	Elnath	45.7
Lesalles	46.3	Tsitsang	46.4	Phact	46.6	Cordiagr	47.4
Bandora	47.5	New Crete	48.1	Kek	50.0	Sichuan	50.4
Shipka	50.9	Wazan	51.1	Brighton	51.5	Sharpe	53.3
Overton	53.7	Old Kentucky	54.6	St. Andre	55.3	Kohlman	55.4
Staffin	55.8	Ovan	56.5	Suzano	56.7	Cammal	57.3
Highspire	57.7	New Sarna	57.9	Necromo	58.5	Moravian	58.6
Styk	58.8	Aosia	59.2	Foot Fall	59.9	Ventabren	60.5

Bibliography

• 20 Year Update
• Chaos March
• Era Digest: Dark Age
• Era Report: 2750
• Field Manual: 3085
• Field Manual: Updates
• Field Report: CCAF
• First Succession War
• Handbook: House Liao
• Historical: Reunification War
• MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (video game)
• NAIS The Fourth Succession War Military Atlas Volume 1
• NAIS The Fourth Succession War Military Atlas Volume 2
• Objective Raids
• Objectives: Capellan Confederation
• Shattered Fortress