Morello

Morello
Vessel Profile
Type	WarShip
Class	Liberator (see Notes)

History

The Morello was a WarShip serving the Star League Defense Force. On the eve of Aleksandr Kerensky's Operation Exodus in 2784, it was one of several SLDF WarShips that were listed with their name, class, and an (unexplained) percentage number (88%); context suggests those would be vessels that joined General Kerensky in his Exodus.

Notes

A (non-captioned) picture on p. 9 of Field Manual: Updates seems to show General Aleksandr Kerensky and some of his officers in a planning session on the eve of his Operation Exodus. A large screen in the background depicts a starmap with what presumably was the planned Exodus route from New Earth via New Samarkand and into the spinward periphery; the same starmap and route are visible on the table they are gathered around.

Another large display in the background displays what seems to be a listing of WarShips giving their names, class and an unexplained percentage number. The display is partially obscured by people standing in front of it and is cut off where the image ends. Some people have claimed that the picture as printed is a cut-down version of what was originally a larger picture where even more ship names could be read on the display, but even if that is accurate, only the officially published version and the information contained therein can be counted as canonical. The discernible parts that can be read are:

• ??senmayer, 7?% (cut off at the left, but spelled out as "Linsenmayer" by people who worked with CGL)
• Coleman
• Long
• Bills
• Peeples
• Conclin
• ??unders, 84% (cut off at the left, but spelled out as "Saunders" by people who worked with CGL)
• Elle, 88%
• Trossen, 91%
• Unash, 91%
• ??gis, Boyle, 94%
• ?ameron, Franklin, 88%
• Black Lion, Huisman, 92%
• Aegis, Knight, 84%
• McKenna, Zughoffer Wier {sic}, 112%
• Congress, Walker, 92%
• Liberator {sic}, Morello, 88%
• Lola III, Muraca, 80%
• Cameron, Reinhard, 76%
• McKenna, Spicer, 77%
• Ess??, Rondeau, 79%
• ??vedten, 75% (cut off at the left, but spelled out as "Tvedten" by people who worked with CGL)
• ?ainkiller
• Van Vliet
• Skutell

According to a comment from BattleTech writer Øystein Tvedten on the official BattleTech Forum, several BattleTech writers had WarShips that went on the Exodus named after them in this picture. The Morello was presumably named for Melissa Morello, an Iron Wind Metals employee.

In what seems to be an anachronism, the class indicated for the Morello is "Liberator". That class was only introduced by the Clans in the thirty-first century, three centuries after Kerensky's Exodus, by taking the six mothballed Avatar-class vessels that had joined the Exodus fleet and refurbishing them to the new Liberator specifications. The CGL writing staff have acknowledged that it is "a difficult one to reconcile", with the suggestion that maybe the naming is indicative of another Liberator class that already existed at the time. Alternatively, the Liberator upgrade modification to the older Avatar class may have been devised before the Clans upgraded their mothballed ships in this fashion three hundred years later, and the Morello may thus have been an upgraded Avatar that was a forerunner or prototype of the Liberator class complete with the recorded class change. No official ruling was made to clarify the situation.

Bibliography

• Field Manual: Updates