Jake Mason
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Jake Mason | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal | |
| Born | 2996 |
| Affiliation | House Mason |
| Profile | |
| Rank | Commander |
| Profession | MechWarrior |
| Family | |
| Parents | Nikolai Mason (father) Chloe Reed (mother) |
Child of Chloe Reed and Nikolai Mason, Jake Mason, alternately known as simply Commander Mason, was the commanding officer and inheritor of the Nik's Cavaliers mercenary unit.
Contents
History[edit]
Born during his parents' time with the Grave Walkers, the infant Jake Mason would accompany them when they joined the famous Eridani Light Horse in 2997[1] and worked towards his mother's dream of her very own mercenary unit, Chloe's Cavaliers, which was founded in 3007 on Galatea.[2] In his youth, Jake would travel with his parents while Chloe's Cavaliers completed a variety of small-scale contracts, largely for Interstellar Expeditions on behalf of Sebastian Spears.[3]
Though his parents tried to insulate him as much as possible from battle, Jake Mason would be targeted by an enemy during the Cavaliers' employment on McKenna in the Free Worlds League's Protectorate in 3008. With the pro-Anton Marik planetary government hiring the unit to make a show of defending against raiders secretly stirring up tensions against Captain-General Janos Marik, when the Cavaliers proved entirely too successful, the governor plotted to use suborned Cavaliers member Dawson Clarmont to kidnap Jake to blackmail his parents into acquiescing to the bandit attacks. His parents unaware of this, when Jake requested his own room on the other side of the large ranch house where the unit was staying they had no reason to refuse, providing an opening for the kidnapping. Fortunately, thanks to Jake's father's underworld contacts revealing the plot, while initially misreading the identity of the kidnapper, Nikolai mortally wounded an ultimately repentant Dawson and saved his son.[3]
While it was always assumed he would eventually become a MechWarrior and take command of the Cavaliers at some point, the tragic events of McKenna highlighted the abrupt and harsh nature of the mercenary life, driving his parents and the rest of the unit to press Jake harder than before as a means of ensuring his safety. To his credit the twelve-year-old would excel in both the hand-to-hand training with the Cavaliers XO Ryana Campbell and MechWarrior training with the rest of unit, a natural pilot already performing better than Great House recruits many years older, inspiring great pride in his mother.[4]
Jake Mason would accompany his parents during a contract to protect an Interstellar Expeditions dig on the Federated Suns system of Mallory's World, continuing his training until the Cavaliers found themselves unwillingly drawn into Third Battle of Mallory's World. With the small Cavaliers increasingly out of depth in the titanic clash between the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns and Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery but his mother feeling obliged to the contract, she led a lance to hold back their Combine pursuers, sacrificing herself to ensure the safety of the Cavaliers and her son. While heartbroken, Jake would hug his father as they shared the pain of her loss.[4]
The Black Inferno Affair[edit]
In 3015, Captain Jake Mason would accompany his father Commander Nikolai Mason as they attempted to rendezvous with a contact for supplies on the Federated Suns world of De Berry, only to realize it was a trap set by a mysterious mercenary unit seeking information from Jake's father. Upon hearing their demand was for coordinates, Nikolai ordered his son to return to base and flee aboard the unit's Leopard-class DropShip, sacrificing his life to ensure their escape. Taking over command of a unit reduced to just two 'Mechs, Jake Mason and the Cavaliers' remaining senior staff (Operations Officer Ryana Campbell and Chief Tech Fahad Arazad) reached out to Sebastian Spears who provided assistance in escaping the system.[5]
Armed with a reused mercenary registration number supplied by Spears to mask their origins, Mason vowed to rebuild his command to locate his enemies and avenge his father. As Jake completed contracts over time, his reborn Cavaliers' reputation grew and they built up a lance of progressively stronger 'Mechs with veteran pilots. After leaving Federated Suns space for the Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League in search of leads, they discover the name of their enemy, the Black Inferno, whose strikes in the region have spawned a wave of refugee migrations. With Spears' aid, Ryana deduces that Black Inferno raids are all against locations rumored to be holding undiscovered LosTech, forcibly ejecting the local inhabitants to allow them to secretly extract it.[5]
Now taking the fight to the Black Inferno and the man who killed his father, Andreas Kane, Jake's early successes lead to overconfidence that results in the Cavaliers walking into a trap on Cavanaugh. Barely surviving the ambush, Ryana is able to intercept a transmission between Kane and his lieutenant which reveals the Black Inferno's home base is on Xinyang and that their secret benefactor is in fact Precentor Kenzo Yamata, a highly ranked member of ComStar's intelligence agency, ROM. With Interstellar Expeditions antagonistic toward ComStar, Spears' willingness to assist Jake in defeating the Black Inferno increases.[5]
Defeating Inferno member Zavarov to reclaim his father's Victor while raiding an Inferno repair and refit base on Eaton, Fahad discovers that the sought-after coordinates were hidden in Nickolai's 'Mech all along. While Ryana works on deciphering the three sets of heavily encrypted coordinates, Spears approaches Jake with an offer of partnership to assist in pushing back against the influence of ComStar, providing the Cavaliers with the location of a rogue mercenary unit sitting on a treasure trove of advanced weaponry they can take.[5]
With assault 'Mechs, advanced weaponry, and Spears' assistance, the Cavaliers are finally ready to put an end to the Black Inferno, launching an attack against their home base on Xinyang. Razing the Inferno base to the ground, the Cavaliers confront Inferno and ComStar forces until Kane emerges with his King Crab to try and stop them. Though Jake is able to kill Kane, Yamata uses the distraction to escape. Searching through the ruins, the Cavaliers and Spears discover that ComStar has been using a Star League Defense Force map found in a flooded Castle Brian on Xinyang as a guide to recover hidden Star League caches with the Black Inferno's help, and that ComStar's interest in Nikolai's coordinates was to fill deliberately destroyed gaps in that map.[5]
Eventually breaking the encryption on the first set of coordinates, the Cavaliers discover that they point to HD-276914, a reportedly unsettled world in the uncharted coreward Periphery on the outskirts of Draconis Combine space. Arriving there, they find an extensive ComStar stellar research facility and that even without the coordinates, Yamata and ComStar's Explorer Corps are searching the region system by system to pick up the trail. Striking a ComStar communications hub to slow down their efforts, IE assistance allows Ryana to crack the second set of coordinates, which lead to HD-389202, another supposedly uncharted system that is found to be the site of a massive and long-abandoned Star League spaceport, but that ComStar has only just beaten them there.[5]
Confronted by Yamata himself in an Annihilator, seeking to deal with the Cavaliers once and for all, Jake succeeds in defeating him; Fahad reveals that Nikolai's Victor is sending a signal to a secret 'Mech bay nearby which opened to reveal a pristine Nightstar, a 'Mech unseen in centuries. Through an audio log in the Nightstar, the Cavaliers realize that the immensely powerful 'Mech belonged to Nikolai, who hid it decades earlier in 2986 after recognizing it would complicate his planned infiltration of the Inner Sphere.[5]
Reaching the final set of coordinates, this time ahead of ComStar, the Cavaliers and Interstellar Expeditions are confronted by a huge derelict Star League–era JumpShip in orbit of HD-438297. Landing to search for answers, the Cavaliers find a massive underground SLDF base emblazoned with an unknown insignia and filled with a treasure trove of LosTech 'Mechs and a memory core, just as ComStar arrives via a Pirate Point, dropping lance after lance of assault 'Mechs to destroy them. Jake and the Cavaliers successfully hold off ComStar long enough for Ryana to copy and wipe the memory core to deny ComStar the greatest prize before they flee.[5]
Taking stock of the situation, the Cavaliers realize that Nikolai Mason was probably a descendant of General Aleksandr Kerensky's long departed Exodus fleet, who traveled to the Inner Sphere on an intelligence gathering mission ahead of their possible return, only for his arrival to be detected by ComStar despite his efforts to obscure it. With the contents of the memory core requiring many years to decipher, Jake agrees to turn it over to an eager and grateful Spears, trusting that unlike ComStar, Interstellar Expeditions will use it for the betterment of the Inner Sphere. Now that all has been sorted and noting that they're not super rich yet, Mason directs Ryana to line up new contracts for the unit while Fahad resumes his trademark grumbling.[5]
BattleMech[edit]
While on Mallory's World, Jake Mason would undertake MechWarrior training drills at the controls of a Wasp.[4]
At the time of his father's death, Jake would pilot a CN9-A Centurion, recovered by the Cavaliers from a ruined factory on Raman II and rebuilt by Fahad.[6] Heavily damaged in the escape from Black Inferno ambush, Jake would use a JVN-10F Javelin on a series of contracts to secure safe passage out of the De Berry system.[5]
Behind the Scenes[edit]
In MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Jake Mason was voiced by Jason Kappus.[7]
Notes[edit]
- The early development of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries did not firmly lock in a protagonist in hopes of allowing players to modify or select either a male or female "Commander Mason." To accommodate this requirement the stores of MechWarrior 5: Origins were written by Randall N. Bills without confirming the character's gender, always referring to them as merely child or kid. By the original 2019 release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries only the male voiced character was completed and became the default, though continued to be referred to only as his rank. His eventual first name of Jake only appeared in the enhanced 2021 release, specifically the updated post-Tutorial cinematic, with the remainder of the original contents unchanged. This fact means while the child of Chloe Reed and Nikolai Mason is a canonical BattleTech character, the name and even gender offered for that character is located in an apocryphal source.
References[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
- Contested Dreams (short story)
- Endless War (short story)
- Knives in the Dark (short story)
- MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (video game)
- Obligation's Forge (short story)