Mercenary Review Board

Formed in 2789 by ComStar founder Jerome Blake, the Mercenary Review Board allowed ComStar agents to serve as brokers for all mercenaries and their employers in the Inner Sphere. While publicly accepted as a means to ensure neutral dealings for all parties, ComStar developed the board as a means to monitor and control mercenary forces. After negotiating a contract, an employer would turn over the full amount of money (plus a 5 percent handling fee) to local ComStar authorities. ComStar, in turn, advanced as much of the payment as it saw fit to the mercenary unit for necessary purchases and operating capital. Upon successful completion of their contract, the mercenaries collected the balance (less a second 5 percent handling charge).

Arbitration of contracts by the Mercenary Review Board provided a valuable safeguard on both sides. Any unit failing to perform contracted services after taking an advance found itself unable to evade ComStar's almost universal reach. ComStar informed other potential employers of a rogue unit's actions, and had the power to threaten an Interdiction against any House employing such a unit. ComStar returned the money to the original employer when a unit skipped on a contract, and in the interim, used the money for profitable investments.

To ensure fair dealings on the part of employers as well as those they hire, Blake provided for a panel of ComStar administrators to hear claims concerning breaches of faith and to judge the veracity of complaints. Upon reaching a verdict, the panel broadcasted its findings throughout the Inner Sphere. As the reputations of mercenary units and their employers have a bearing on subsequent negotiations involving other units or Houses, violating contractual terms offered little profit to any concerned.

Through the Mercenary Review Board's variety of activities, ComStar has functioned not only as a communications service, but also as a mercenary guild, an inter-League criminal extradition service, and a banking house, all of which added considerably through the centuries to ComStar's power and prestige. However, due to ComStar's dealing with the Clans before Tukayyid, most if not all of the Houses no longer trusted the organization as an impartial arbitrator of mercenary contracts and the Board collapsed in 3052. During the peace summit Primus Mori held on Terra in the spring of 3052, Precentor Martial Focht proposed to abandon control. The Houses agreed to have the Board re-form as a jointly administered committee made up of representatives from each government, while allowing ComStar to maintain an active seat. Outreach, the home of Wolf's Dragoons, was chosen as the official home of the new Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission which formed in 3053.