BattleTech: Legends - The Gray Death Legion: Decision at Thunder Rift (Hardcover)

Decision at Thunder Rift by William H. Keith, Jr. is the first novel in the Saga of the Gray Death Legion, and the first novel ever to be released for BattleTech. It was first published in print by FASA in July 1986 and later republished by Roc Books in 1992 and by Catalyst Game Labs as a BattleTech Legends title in July 2016.

An unabridged audio book edition, narrated by Tren Sparks, was released on 22 December 2020.

The book tells the story of the young Grayson Death Carlyle and the events that led to the founding of his famous mercenary unit.

30 years before the Clan invasion, the crumbling empires of the Inner Sphere were locked in the horror of the Third Succession War. The great Houses, whose territories spanned the stars, used BattleMechs to smash each other into rubble...

Grayson Death Carlyle had been training to be a MechWarrior since he was 10 years old, but his graduation came sooner than expected. With his friends and family dead and his father's regiment destroyed, young Grayson finds himself stranded on a world turned hostile. And now he must learn the hardest lesson of all: it takes more than a BattleMech to make a MechWarrior...

To claim the title of MechWarrior all he has to do is capture one of those giant killing machines by himself... If it doesn't kill him first.

• No exact dates are provided in the novel, but the Gray Death Legion scenario pack establishes the climactic battle at Thunder Rift to have occurred in November 3024. The Day of Heroes sourcebook places the events on Trell I in "winter of 3024".
• The exact nature and composition of Carlyle's Commandos is not elaborated upon in the novel, and subsequent sources provided seemingly contradictory information. Eventually, the BattleTech Line Developer ruled that they were an understrength mercenary company consisting of two 'Mech lances and several platoons of infantry, augmented by a third 'Mech lance of local Lyran Commonwealth regulars who had accepted Durant Carlyle as their CO.
• According to Duke Hassid Ricol's (apocryphal) write-up in BattleTechnology, Issue #0102, p. 5, Renfred Tor's JumpShip jumped from Trell to Antares to spread the word about the invasion.
• The book is often (falsely) listed as the second novel published, switching places with The Sword and the Dagger, presumably because the latter is a stand-alone novel that may have been commissioned earlier yet took longer to complete and because Decision at Thunder Rift formed a trilogy together with the third and fourth novel in the classic BattleTech line.
• Later reprints of the novel omit most of a four-page overview of the Trell system, attributed to the Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris, 4th Quadrant, Cis-Peripheral Sector, Lyran Commonwealth (20th edition, published 3015, Tharkad). A digitized version of the 1992 Roc reprint is available for loan at the Internet Archive. The limited preview covers the first nine pages, including the full four-page overview.

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