Vicore Industries

Vicore Industries is best known as the driving force behind the so-called "Project Phoenix" revival of many classic BattleMech designs.

Overview
Based on Demeter, Vicore Industries was created by planetary governor Giovanni De La Sangre. Similar to the boutique 'Mech design firms of Solaris, Vicore doesn't produce many 'Mechs on its own. Instead, Vicore's designers act as a third party design group for established 'Mech manufacturers. These "Project Phoenix" designs were based on long-serving BattleMech designs, and could be produced at existing production facilities with little effort.

Interestingly, many of the 'Mech designs created by Vicore wound up in the hands of the Word of Blake. Manufacturers in several realms found their technical capabilities limited. The Word of Blake somehow "just knew" these factories needed help and arrived to provide the technical support they needed. The Blakist's convenient appearance to solve the problems these factories had in building the Vicore designs just in the nick of time led to many rumors that Vicore or De La Sangre was an ally (or employee) of the Word of Blake.

The rumors of Vicore and Giovanni De la Sangre's links to the Word of Blake gathered strength in late 3065 when Blakist Precentor Martial Cameron St. Jamais asked Vicore's design teams to Terra to assist in bolstering and enhancing Terran production capacity to help in the expansion of the Word of Blake Militia. Aside from remodeling production lines to produce the Project Phoenix 'Mechs, Vicore also developed upgrades for the Grim Reaper and Phoenix-ized redesigns of the Nexus, Raijin and Grand Crusader. In 3066 Vicore reached a licensing agreement with Brooks, Inc. to produce the Galleon tank from a newly refurbished factory on Terra for the Blakist Militia.

When the Jihad burst into open warfare, the fact that almost two-thirds of all Phoenix machines built by all parties had been purchased by the Blakists or parties allied to them lead many more people to question Vicore's intentions, but Vicore and Sangre both professed to be a truly neutral supplier and continued to sell to all comers. Despite Sangre's hopes of Vicore one day becoming one of the top interstellar conglomerates, in 3075 the former ComStar ROM agent "Damocles" finally publicly revealed his decades long investigations of Project Phoenix and evidence that many of Vicore's secondary corporations are little more than Blakist fronts to secretly resupply the Word of Blake Protectorate Militia. While strictly legal, the revelations turned public opinion against Vicore, resulting it being removed from many prominent stock exchanges and triggering formal investigations.

The Federated Suns was finally able to launch an attempt to liberate Demeter on the 1st of February 3077 as a part of Operation SCOUR, the allied coalition assault on the Protectorate. Unfortunately for the coalition, the campaign for Demeter - described as a "factory world" - quickly became a brutal, bogged-down quagmire. The allied coalition forces consisted of the 5th Crucis Lancers, the 15th Arcturan Guards and the 3rd Free Worlds Legionnaires, and found themselves facing not just the divisions of the Styx Protectorate Militia but also two Level IIIs from the 9th Militia Division, Measure of Trust and Call to the Faithful. The Blakists rebuffed the initial attack by the 5th Crucis Lancers and the 15th Arcturan Guards, driving the coalition forces back almost as far as their initial landing zones until an orbital drop by the 3rd Free Worlds Legionnaires saw the Blakists forced to fall back.

The Protectorate Militia forces retreated to New Demeter City, while the 9th Division forces retreated into the Vicore Industries plant. The 5th Crucis Lancers and the 19th Arcturan Guards faced a brutal battle to clear New Demeter City, while the 3rd Free Worlds Legionnaires encircled the 9th Militia Division forces but were unable to dislodge them from the factory complex. The 9th Militia Division forces were finally destroyed by orbital bombardment, which also leveled the Vicore Industries plant. A news story filed by Keevah Acee of the Demeter Free Press on the 17th of March 3077 alleged that the defense of New Demeter City had seen the local citizenry rising up against the coalition forces with whatever weapons they could find or improvise, and also alleged that the Federated Suns front task force had resorted to indiscriminately bombarding not just the Vicore Industries plant but also New Demeter City itself.

Manufacturing
Vicore Industries had a manufacturing center on the planet of Demeter until the plant was destroyed in March 3077: