Durring the invasion of the clans, innersphere warriors 
found themselves on the defensive quite often...to be 
more exact, always.  Innersphere warriors often found
themselves in a situation where they could not win and 
were forced to fight to the death.  The Rooks purpose is 
to let warriors retreat without worry of leaving their rear 
armor vulnerable.

Capabilities: Exept for the ER medium laser mounted in its 
head, the rest of the rook's weapons are rear facing, 
allowing the mech to run away from an opponent at full 
speed, while keeping most of its guns aimed at the enemy. 
 since it is not expected to be engaged in close combat 
and be running away at the same time the rooks design 
take full advantage of long range weapons.  the ER PPC's 
power by itself is more than enough for rear firepower and 
with the addition of the rear facing holly LRM 15 rack with 
artemis IV support the Rook can engage from long range 
and quickly fade away, as if it wasnt there.  all this plus the 
rear facing Diverse optics type 36 ER medium laser the 
rook can decimate any lighter mechs that would be able to 
keep up with it, while leaving heavier mechs in the 
dust.  The rooks armor distribution is also very 
inventive, as the majority of the armor rests on the rear 
torso, this allows the mech to easily stay in the defensive. 
While making it a slow attacker, the thought of the 
innersphere attacking the clans DURING the invasion 
was unheard of.  The arms have also been designed from 
scratch, which wasnt hard since the arms are nothing but 
gigantic plates of armor, placed there to distract attention 
from the torso.  also with its advanced targeting 
computer, reclining pilot's chair, and extended cockpit 
canopy.  the dissadvantage of firing behind ones self is 
greatly reduced.  These new and inventive features and 
capabilities gives the rook a niche occupied by no other 
mech.  a starleague stratagist stated "When given the 
chance, attack and remain on the offensive for as long as 
possible. The enemy is weakest when backing up, and so 
are you." but with the rooks slightly psycotic design, its 
the other way around. The use of endo-steel and ferro 
fibers, free up tonnage for the standard class engine. while 
those are expensive, the cost is nothing compared to a XL 
engine.  and high cost is bad for a mech that was 
predicted to have a good chance of getting destroyed.  
obvioulsy people rather pesemistic at that point in time.  
the standard engine also gives the Rook more hanging in 
there power.

Deployment:  The rook has a small place in almost every 
army, with its reletivly microscopic pricetag of 6,084,800 
C-bills most armys can afford it.  it holds an especialy large 
number in the "federated commonwealth" and capellian 
confederation.  in combat situations the rook has 
distinguished itself on many ocasions.  once durring a clan 
raid of a raslhauge world, the governor was forced to flee 
his capitol, and a lance of mechs one of them being a 
rook managed to escort the governor's armored hovercar 
to a waiting dropship while being chased by a star of clan 
omnimechs the entire way.  the hovercar and the rook 
were the only ones to survive.

Variants: Norse-Storm Tech is currently working on a 
version the ROK-K12 the switches the directions of all the 
weapons on the mech, but it is not known how successful 
the variant will be.