My character's parents were samurai officers in the DCMS; Mizuno Naganori and Nakano, minor landholders and heroes of the Third Succession War, who served as commanding officers in one of the units that served as an ongoing antagonist force for the player characters in my old, 3025 pnp campaign. Following the wind-down of hostilities, they "retired" to garrison duty on their home planet, being called up again to serve in the Fourth Succession War, and finally retiring to garrison "for good" in 3030. They had several children - their eldest was born in 3015, and my character (the second youngest) being born sometime between 3025 and 3030. It's possible she was actually the biological daughter of a different character, a Swedenese ace mechwarrior who was the main Draconis "bad guy" for my old campaigns, but I'm on the fence about that. War Orphans and Yakuza are already plenty melodramatic, without adding in cuckery to the mix.
Anyway, following the end of the Fourth Succession War, her parents turned to planetary administration. They were an earnest and honorable overseers, trying to balance the often conflicting needs of planetside dissidents, loyal DCMS soldiers, and remote Imperial bureaucrats. They also had a quiet relationship with the local Yakuza, the Itano-gumi, who in addition to arms smuggling and prostitution, ran several "legitimate" mercenary units known for their skill in sniping and massed LRM fire. These units were nominally employed as bodyguards, scouts, and rear-echelon liaisons, but off the books, served as a way of conducting "humanitarian" missions that were not otherwise authorized. For example, if a remote civilian outpost of no strategic value to DCMS command needed food and medical supplies, some local military stock might be "lost" to "pirate raids" - with the Itano-gumi quietly handling the deliveries. These "discrepancies" were, in part, what led to the family becoming noticed by a powerful and corrupt court official, Kira Yoshinaka (a wealthy minister who had served with Naganori during the Third Succession War, and in the years following his promotion to the Imperial Court, had become compromised by the Maskirovka). Despite the risks, they continued to rely on the discrete services of the Itano-gumi, as in this way, Naganori and Nakano hoped to straddle the line between duty to the Combine and duty to the local people they ruled. Sadly, of course, conflict between locals and the DCMS was ultimately inevitable, and nothing they could do would stop it.
By the start of the Ronin War, my family was still at least nominally committed to the Emperor. They were given a timeframe to leave the system, which would have been seen as a betrayal of their loyal service and feudal contract - after all, they'd fought in the vanguard of two major galactic wars, and now they were being forced to give up their ancestral land holdings, simply because the Emperor thought it would be easier to withdraw! However, they were dutiful bushi, and would not have countenanced rebellion, at least not at first. Besides, between trying to reign in disgruntled local soldiers, and setting up business arrangements so that the most at-risk locals would be able to survive after the DCMS withdrawal, the final days of their stay on planet would have kept them too busy to plan sedition, even if they'd wanted to.
However, what they hadn't counted on was their elder son, who by this time was a highly promising senior cadet in the Sun Zhang Academy. A student radical, he was part of the first wave of officers who refused the standdown orders and attempted to recapture planets for the Draconis Combine. His unit failed, of course, and he, having escaped destruction at the hands of the newly-formed Kungsarme, fled back to his parents' estate using blackmarket channels. Kira Yoshinaka seized this opportunity, declaring their son a criminal, and ordering Naganori and Nakano to hand over themselves, and their children - all of their children - on suspicion of disloyalty.
Faced with a choice between loyalty to the Dragon, and loyalty to their family, they chose their family. There was a brief military campaign as the newly-raised local Rasalhague forces attempted to move in and put down the "Ronin" rebellion on their world. However, lack of experience, combined with a lack of resolve (most of the local Kungsarme officers had been trained by the Lords Mizuno, and had even less desire to fight than they did), led to the Ronin forces achieving a rapid, though costly and clearly temporary, victory. Sensing the situation spiraling out of control (or perhaps, anticipating the situation spiraling out of control) Minister Kira authorized the deployment of an elite battalion of Liao expats to reinforce the Kungsarme, who landed on the planet in force not long after. Supported by land, air, and Mech forces, fresh and well-armed, both sides could see the coming battle would end only one way. (side note: I'm thinking maybe there's something of interest to the Maskirovka on this planet; perhaps, unknown to anyone outside the intelligence community, the family castle was sitting on a secret SLDF cache?)
Realizing that they had neither the numbers nor supplies to hold out against an experienced Capellan expeditionary unit, Naganori and Nakano resolved to make one final stand. Hoping to preserve as many lives as possible, they ordered most of their forces, including the Itano-gumi and the bulk of their household Guard, to stand down. In exchange for a general surrender of the bulk of their forces and a final, suicidal duel, with nothing but their Command Lance against whatever forces the Capellans wished to field, the two Samurai asked only that their soldiers, civilians, and youngest children be spared. The Capellans agreed to these terms.
.... and promptly reneged.
Ambushing Naganori and Nakano as they moved to the designated battlesite, the Liao Mechs slaughtered the Ronin command lance like dogs, blasting Naganori in the back and crushing Nagano's escape pod in flagrant disregard to the Ares Convention. They then turned on the Ronin units that had stood down and were in the process of surrender - blasting several lances of dismounted Mech pilots away as they stood on a parade ground in front of their powered-down Mechs - as well as the local city and outlying communities, still swollen with refugees from the weeks-long fighting that many thought had just come to an end. Of course, the after-action reports were "edited" so that the Ronin units shot first, and the excessive violence that leveled much of the surrounding province was an unfortunate, but necessary, reaction to an insurgency that in its last moments had turned desperate and suicidal. (side note: the Liao expats are not just dumb savages, of course. Being Capellans, they're clever savages; leveling the city and slaughtering everyone nearby would provide the perfect cover for their covert mission. In the chaos and destruction, it would be easy to abscond with Star League tech from a cache neither Rasalhague nor the DCMS even knew was there; the former site of the cache just one more smoking hole in a broken sea of rubble and carnage)
Several Ronin units did manage to hold on, however, buying time for civilians and non-essential military personnel to escape. The Itano-gumi was at the forefront of the fighting and one of the last units to evacuate; the Yakuza oyabun personally rescued both my character and her youngest sibling, stashing us both in his mech mere moments before the family castle was leveled by artillery fire. Knowing that there would be no quarter given, my second-eldest sibling - barely old enough to pilot a Mech - offered to stay behind and cover the Itano-gumi as it escorted the last of the withdrawing forces into orbit. While this final group made it into orbit and withdrew safely, all of the remaining Ronin DCMS were massacred, as well as any civilians unlucky enough to miss the dropships. Several days later, after cordoning off the area and meticulously hunting down starving stragglers who'd tried to hide in the wreckage, the planet was declared pacified, and formally part of the FRR.
Of the now leaderless DCMS personnel who remained alive on the Yakuza ships, a small cadre of 47 survivors were organized into a combat unit within the Yakuza organization; this unit, in turn, would form the nucleus of what would, in 15 years time, become my character's personal mercenary company.
