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The Clans

The Clan "Daggerstar." Note the similarity to the Cameron Star.

Powerful and ruthless, they struck like lightning, attacking every sector at once.

Having fled from the dissolution of the Star League, Aleksandr Kerensky's SLDF Exodus fleet settled several resource-poor planets in 2786, far beyond even the Periphery states. Kerensky hoped his loyalists could one day reinstate the League to its former glory, but further conflict and rebellion drove his son Nicholas and his most faithful followers to another world called Strana Mechty. Nicholas returned in 2822 to quell the rebels and establish the Clans, an idealized society he devised in his exile. Though the Clans prospered for a time, their isolation and unique societal norms twisted Aleksandr's vision, leading to their 3049 invasion of the Inner Sphere to restore the Star League by conquest.

Originally, there were twenty Clans as envisioned by Kerensky, but disagreements between them saw one clan (the "Not-Named") exterminated by the rest almost immediately, and several weaker clans were conquered and absorbed by others. At the time of the Inner Sphere invasion seventeen Clans remained, and the events of the invasion would lead to a second extermination and subsequently to the Wars of Reaving that permanently split the Clans in half: By the time of the Jihad there are seven Clans permanently exiled to the Inner Sphere and only four remaining in Clan space.

The Clans are a culture born from desperate necessity, aimed to promote excellence and create the greatest good at minimal expense. Fundamentally, they are a society on permanent war-footing - everyone and everything is Clan property, honor is given to those who best serve the Clan, and disputes are resolved through personal challenges. Unsurprisingly, this system regards warriors as the most elite citizens, with voting rights belonging exclusively to warriors, and authority granted to reflect combat skill rather than any talent at strategy, negotiation, or administration. While this often results in myopic leadership that favors brute-force solutions, some genuinely shrewd individuals rise through the ranks from time to time.

General Tropes

• Animal Motifs: Nearly every Clan is named after some kind of animal, typically a bigger, meaner, cousin-with-a-prison-record version of a Terran animal found on or introduced to the Clan Homeworlds. The only exception is Clan Blood Spirit, named after the esprit de corps. (Clan Burrock then created an animal and named it the Blood Spirit as a Take That! to the Clan).
• Appeal to Force: A central pillar of Clan Justice. Any decision that isn't already being decided by a Trial can be overturned through a Trial of Refusal, which serves as the only legal appeal process. Because the Clans aren't complete idiots, however, the Trial of Refusal gives the appealant odds proportional to how much they lost the decision. As most things are decided through a council of equals, this can quickly mean odds of 4-to-1 or more to appeal a broad consensus.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: One of the core pillars of Clan society. Not only is the warrior caste in charge, but nearly all leadership positions - and even whether an individual may be part of the warrior caste - are determined via Trial by Combat. They get bit hard by the downside of this trope. Unlike the Successor State military commanders who have to deal with managing logistics and planning strategic movements across entire sectors, the Clan trials only emphasized martial prowess. This meant that the best pilots and soldiers rose without any consideration for their leadership, tactical, strategic, logistic, or political skills.
• Broken Pedestal: Many citizens of the Inner Sphere (including, most notably, Romano Liao) believed that, when humanity got to its darkest time, the SLDF would return from deep space and bring justice and peace back to the Inner Sphere. When their descendants returned as the Clans, it did not sit well, and popular opinion of the SLDF turned ugly.
• Challenging the Chief: A Trial of Position, which is to say a duel with 'Mechs or fists, is neccesary to obtain promotion for Clan warriors. Unlike most examples of this trope, these are only rarely against the current holder of a position (filling a position requires the blessing of that position's direct superior, and said superiors will rarely sanction a duel for it if the current holder is alive, loyal and/or competent), but rather against other aspirants seeking to fill an empty/open one (due to the previous holder having died or themselves been promoted). However, the only way to become Khan while the current Khan lives requires a duel (and also the backing of a significant portion of the Clan Council, as a Khan has no direct superior).
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All over the place depending on the particular Clan. While each has a signature color used on maps, some have a particular favored color for units, most notably the Jade Falcons, who heavily use a green livery with yellow accents (Funny, that...). Others may have a color they might slightly favor, but routinely go off in different directions depending on the particular unit's preference. As a for instance, Clan Wolf 'Mechs are described as painted exclusively in mottled grey, but light brown is their official color on maps and used in most of their now-canon paint schemes.
• Crippling Overspecialization: During their time apart from the rest of human society in the Inner Sphere, the Clans' concept of warfare evolved into a duel-based method of fighting over territory, resources, or even decisions and rank. These principles were codified in the zellbrigen honor code, which Clan warriors adhere to religiously. Even at the strategic level, the Clans focus on only using the bare minimum of military assets to claim an objective, sometimes at the expense of operational effectiveness, in order to secure more honor by winning "more with less". This attitude is due to the harsh conditions of the original Clan homeworlds, and the devastation brought by the Exodus Civil War and Operation KLONDIKE. As a result, in a one-on-one fight Clan warriors will often come out on top, but they ultimately failed in their goal of conquering the Inner Sphere because only a handful of Clan commanders could adequately plan and execute large-scale military campaigns against the more pragmatic armies of the Inner Sphere, who had little or no interest in fighting the Clans one-on-one in honourable combat.
  • Many Clans focus their toumans on one specific kind of combat vehicle or type of warfare, at the expense of all other branches. For example, Clans Star Adder and Snow Raven focused heavily on space combat, Clan Cloud Cobra focused on aerospace fighter combat, and Clan Smoke Jaguar focused almost exclusively on BattleMechs. In general, the Clans see BattleMechs as the ultimate combat machine, as they are well suited to one-one-on confrontations (aerospace fighters are the second largest element, for the same reason). Only Clan Hell's Horses still practice proper combined arms warfare between BattleMechs, combat vehicles, infantry, artillery, and aerospace assets.
  • The Clan obsession with "honorable combat" left them with virtually no intelligence-gathering capabilities - the surveillance WarShip designs brought on the Exodus were mothballed and weren't reactivated for the invasion, and the Clan "Watch" proved generally incompetent at anything but internal security matters. A Clan force would simply bid and bargain out a Trial of Possession for a planet, and centuries of ritualized warfare made them view covert operations as both dishonorable and unnecessary, so the Watch was ill-trained, ill-equipped, underfunded, and under-staffed (mostly made up of technicians, merchants, and washed-out or disgraced warriors). The Watch rarely if ever infiltrated an opposing faction, intel gathering was limited to watching the local news before an attack, and what data they did gather couldn't be properly analyzed in time for the attack.
  • Clan combat doctrine is heavily focused on rapid, decisive duels - hitting the enemy as hard as possible in small groups and getting things over with as quickly as possible with a minimum of fuss, waste, or destruction. While this is well-suited for the smaller-scale fights in Clan space where both sides agree to fight by the same rules, their attempted conquest of the Inner Sphere turned into a long, grinding slog where logistics were a horrendous problem.
• Culture Clash: Numerous things that are unquestioned in the Clans seem completely insane to the Inner Sphere, and vice-versa. Many of these are highlighted during Phelan Kell's initiation into the Clan lifestyle.
  • The Clans generally don't bother with deception when it comes to arranging battles, as it would be dishonorable. Multiple Sphereoid units were baffled by Clans asking who they were going to be fighting and where, and the Clans were likewise shocked that the Inner Sphere lied to them about who they would be fighting.
  • A Clan warrior is considered over the hill by thirty if they haven't won a Bloodname, when an Inner Sphere warrior is regarded as in their prime at that point. Clan solahma units are treated as cannon fodder.
  • Clanners were disgusted by the Inner Sphere's mercenaries, when hiring mercenary outfits is a day-to-day thing in the Inner Sphere.
  • The vicious Might Makes Right social laws of the Clans seem harsh to Sphereoids, but the Inner Sphere's hangups on sexual fidelity and courtship seem bizarre to Clanners in turn.
  • The Clans' idea that civilians exist to support the Clan and are in essence belongings of the Clan. Many border worlds between the Successor States were used to being repeatedly conquered and having to send levies and tax revenue to a new overlord every time, but the Clans demanding the complete submission of and control over their populations as a matter of course (especially by Clan Smoke Jaguar, who had very little regard for civilians even amongst Clans) lead to a lot of unrest and outright rebellion.
• Culture Police: Kerensky instilled a deep loyalty and devotion to the Clan Way — also known as the Honour Road — into the Clans. Being accused of being 'un-Clan-like' is a very severe accusation in their society, and can often leave either the accuser or the accused exiled to the Bandit Caste or dead.
• Cultural Posturing: Both internally and against the Inner Sphere.
  • The Clans see themselves as the true inheritors of the Star League, destined to return to the Inner Sphere and re-establish the peace of the League and viewing the Spheroids as honor-less barbarians who had everything they could ever need and destroyed it in the pursuit of power. This led to basically Suicidal Overconfidence in strategy - the Warrior Caste of all the Clans combined were hilariously outnumbered by one Successor State's military, let alone the entire Inner Sphere, but they still believed themselves superior.
  • Each Clan also tends to look on most of the other Clans with some level of disdain, each one seeing themselves as the true inheritors of Nicholas Kerensky's will, legacy, and intentions. Most of them have one ally or another, but no one Clan gets along with all the others.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Toyed with. Most of the Clan cybernetics or organ or limb replacements are just fine, and better than what the Inner Sphere has to offer. But their Enhanced Imaging implants, that let warriors control their 'Mechs without the heavy neurohelmet and are necessary to control ProtoMechs at all, tend to make the user go insane quickly, to the point of being unfit for duty within three years.
• Death Seeker: Clans have solahma units made up of old or dying warriors who go on suicidal missions in hopes of getting an honorable death. Keep in mind "old" in Clan terms means "over 30 years of age."
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • If a Clan conquers something through a legal Trial, it is considered theirs by Clan Law. This includes people, who are all considered property of their Clan by default, and civilians part of a conquered territory are expected to make the transition into their new Clan without a fuss. This led to a fair bit of Culture Clash with the Inner Sphere, whose planets were used to being conquered but not so much its people being treated as property.
  • Clanners take bondsmen (prisoners used as indentured servants) from other Clans or the Inner Sphere, who are bound by honour to serve their conqueror until they can be either adopted into their new Clan (usually after a probationary period) or ransomed back. Bondsmen are taken by individual Clanners, usually as part of a battle, and as such Warriors (or Inner Sphere MechWarriors) most often become Bondsmen.
• Designer Babies: "Trueborn" Clan warriors are created in batches of siblings from Uterine Replicators and ruthlessly competed against each other, with any washouts being relegated to the appropriate civilian caste. The process is practically sacred to them - every warrior wants to acquire a Bloodname so their genes will be worthy of contributing to future generations, and references to the process as "genetic engineering" are considered an insult. And it isn't really "genetic engineering," in the way most people think of it, but more eugenics. The warriors of one generation are bred from the very best of the previous generation (with matches carefully considered for what traits they want to pass on or improve), so each generation of warriors starts as good as the best of the last, and only gets better with training. In theory, anyway. Proof that the Clan breeding program works as advertised is found in the Elementals: hulking, eight-foot-tall, supremely muscled men and women designed for the rigors of infantry combat in their suits of Powered Armor. Proof that it perhaps doesn't work as well as intended is found in the AeroPilot phenotype, small and slight to better handle G-forces and with enlarged eyes and craniums for superior reaction time, they nevertheless rarely outperform Inner Sphere AeroPilots.
• Didn't Think This Through: Operation REVIVAL in a nutshell. The Crusader Clans who pushed for it assumed it would be Operation KLONDIKE 2.0; a series of one-sided curb-stomp battles against obsolete 'Mechs on devastated worlds, whose populations would welcome the Children of Kerensky as heroic liberators and gladly join their new Star League. Needless to say, reality ensued...
  • The Crusaders decided to only let five Clans participate (and Clan Wolf was a lock-in), and determined by the four others by Trial (in contrast to KLONDIKE, which gave every Clan a role and a clear objective). This not only left the majority of the Clans' firepower at home (and caused a lot of bad blood that would eventually spawn the Wars of Reaving), but the four chosen to invade were horribly under-strength by having bid away most of their forces.
  • The Clans assigned invasion corridors to each of the Invader Clans with an Instant-Win Condition of reaching Terra first, causing the Clans to ignore the necessity of consolidation and setting up occupation governments in favour of racing for the finish line (or the strongest foe). This also let ComStar and the Inner Sphere discover and exploit their internal divisions.
  • Except for Clan Wolf, the invading Clans brought only the bare minimum of supplies and reserve forces with them, on the assumption they'd be able to take whatever they needed from the newly-conquered Inner Sphere planets. Not only was this incredibly optimistic on their part, they didn't realise the Successor State forces would gladly destroy resources and infrastructure rather than allow the Clans to take them, which is anathema to the Clans' "waste not want not" mindset, but a well-known tactic during the Succession Wars.
  • Unlike their Clan counterparts, many Inner Sphere civilians refused to work with the Clans and continued to resist their occupations. This forced the Clan garrisons to become increasingly harsh, further alienating the conquered populations and increasing resistance in their Occupation Zones.
    • In general the Clans had no concept of guerilla warfare. In their society a defending force will either fight to the death, or be allowed to quit and retire honorably when they have no chance of winning (a ritual known as hegira). In contrast, many Inner Sphere units that survived the initial Clan attacks went to ground and continued to resist the Clan garrisons, sometimes for years after the initial conquest. This forced the Clans to redirect more and more of their forces to put down rebellions behind the lines, slowing their advance into the Inner Sphere significantly.
• Duels Decide Everything: Trials by Combat in this case. Clan society is centered around high-intensity, highly ritualistic warfare with as few combatants and materiel as needed, intended to solve issues quickly and violently.
  • The rules of a Trial of Grievance also apply to other castes, but Loophole Abuse is generously applied. Other castes' Trials usually involve some sort of non-lethal competition like a drinking contest, a game of darts or golf, or just about anything both parties agree to. This also allows people from other castes a fair chance against the Warriors.
• Enemy Civil War: Lucky for the Inner Sphere, the Clans were too busy with the Wars of Reaving to invade again during the Jihad, when they would have stood a fairly good chance of taking over.
• The Exile: Abjuration is one of the more common criminal punishments in Clan society, and involves a vote: On a four-fifths majority, the offender is banished from their Clan and Caste (provided they have one) on pain of death. While contestable by a Trial of Refusal, the fact that voting is involved means that the odds can quickly get stacked against the offender if they are unpopular enough. Originally, Abjuration required the destruction of all genetic material associated with the guilty party's bloodname (essentially an Annihilation), but the Clans quickly repurposed Abjuration to 'merely' destroying the guilty party's samples (if any) and letting them leave alive. Abjured Clanners are still considered Clanners, but are outside the protection of Clan law. They usually end up joining the Dark Caste.
  • Entire Clans can also be Abjured, as the Nova Cats discovered after they allied with the Inner Sphere.
• Fantastic Caste System: The Clans have five castes: Warriors, Scientists, Technicians, Merchants, and Laborers. The castes are theoretically equal but Warriors are the most powerful and prestigious. The Warriors do hold the only political power in the Clans and are intended to lead their Clan (and in Grand Council, the Clans as a whole), but this is intended as a "First Among Equals" sort of thing. Some Clans do it that way, but in others, the Warrior Caste are just a particularly weird flavor of Aristocrats Are Evil, and even the other castes fall into a strict hierarchy of power, prestige, and social standing. The Laborer caste pretty much inevitably hits rock-bottom in any Clan going this direction.
  • The Dark Caste, or Bandit Caste, is an unofficial sixth caste made up of pirates, criminals, or renegades who refuse to integrate into Clan society.
  • When Clan Goliath Scorpion was Abjured, they left for the Periphery and formed the Escorpión Imperio by conquering Nueva Castile and the Umayyad Caliphate and produced two new castes. The Support Caste handled logistics, emergency services, and administration. The Garrison Caste was a place for former Umayyad and Nueva Castile soldiers who weren't considered fit for the Warrior Caste.
  • The different castes outside the warrior caste could be considered to have sub-castes. For example, a technician who maintains a BattleMech has greater prestige than one who maintains a hydroponics unit.
• Fantastic Racism: All Clans use genetically engineered "trueborn" warriors but each Clan has different policies on admitting "freeborns" (people born through normal sexual intercourse) into the warrior caste.
  • Many Clanners, especially the Crusaders, view "Spheroids" (the people of the Inner Sphere) as violent, undisciplined barbarians.
  • In the aftermath of the Great Refusal the Clans turned their prejudices inward, with those Clans who didn't participate in Operation REVIVAL deeming those who did as tainted by their time in the Inner Sphere. This led directly to the Wars of Reaving that saw the Invading Clans either destroyed or forced into exile.
• Fantastic Rank System: The Clans use a different rank structure to the Inner Sphere ranging from Warrior > Star Commander > Star Captain > Star Colonel > Galaxy Commander > saKhan > Khan. The Clans also use a different unit structure. For example, their equivalent of a lance of 'Mechs, the star, consists of five BattleMechs as opposed to four. The organization system starts with a "Point," an amount of force considered equal to a BattleMech (and thus, a 'Mech is a Point all on its own): a platoon of regular infantry is a Point, five BattleArmor troopers are a Point, two conventional vehicles or AeroSpace fighters are a Point. Five Points makes a Star, two Stars make a Binary and three Stars a Trinary, several Binaries or Trinaries make a Cluster, multiple Clusters form a Galaxy (these are equivalent to Inner Sphere designations of Element, Lance, Company, Regiment, and Battalion). The rank system fits neatly into the organization structure: a Warrior commands only themselves, a Point Commander commands a Point, a Star Commander commands a Star, a Star Captain a Binary or Trinary, a Star Colonel a Cluster, a Galaxy Commander a Galaxy. saKhan and Khan are technically military ranks, but won through election rather than Trial of Position.
• Fantastic Slur: "Freebirth" is a slur against those born outside the Clan breeding program, concieved and born the old-fashioned way (though procreation partners are assigned, so eugenics still plays a role). "Freeborn" is the neutral term to describe non-Trueborn. Freeborns have their own slur, "trashborn," for the Trueborn, though they tend not to use it where Trueborn can hear them. Among certain Clans and certain types of Trueborn, "freebirth" is a generic swear word to express frustration or exasperation, indicating how little those people think of freeborn.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: For the Mongol Empire during its invasion of Europe.
• Fictional Political Party:
  • The Clans are divided into two factions: The Crusaders and the Wardens. The Crusaders believe that the Clans should invade the Inner Sphere as soon as possible while the Wardens believe the Clans should not invade unless to protect the Inner Sphere from a severe threat. The Clan Invasion happened when the Crusaders finally came to dominate the vote, and they promptly gave Clan Wolf, the most powerful Warden Clan, the 'position of honour' during the Invasion.
  • Following the Wars of Reaving, the Crusaders were essentially banished or eradicated from Clan society and the Wardens of the Home Clans split into the Bastion and Aggressor factions. The Bastions want to keep the Clans pure from the 'taint' of the Inner Sphere and forbid all contact with the Inner Sphere or with anyone who has been in contact with the Inner Sphere. The Aggressors also want to keep the Clans pure, but believe the Inner Sphere will continue to taint them by its continued existence and as such want to invade and burn it to the ground. This made them view the Invader Clans, who all still held their Inner Sphere conquests after Operation REVIVAL was soundly aborted, as tainted and thus enemies as well. Clan Ghost Bear already made the wholesale move to the Inner Sphere, and the others found themselves following suit as a necessity of survival as a Clan.
• Final Solution: A Clan that is marked for Annihilation will be erased from existence. This has only happened twice in Clan history^note the Not-Named, and Steel Viper at the end of the Wars of Reaving, and both left a notable mark on Clan society. The Inner Sphere intentionally treated the destruction of Clan Smoke Jaguar as close to Annihilation as possible to traumatize the Clans.
• Free-Love Future: Downplayed. The Clans have a pretty casual approach to sex, especially among members of the same sibko. Sexual fidelity is a bizarre concept to them, courtship is limited to walking up to someone and asking if they're interested in sex, and marriage doesn't exist (among the lower castes, procreation partners are assigned, but people are free to bang whoever they want outside those arrangements).
• The Fundamentalist: Every Clan to some degree views itself as the only 'true' followers of Kerensky's vision, though the degree to which they adhere to fundamentalism varies from Clan to Clan. Even at its worst (like with Clan Steel Viper) the Clans' abhorrence of all forms of waste also limits how far they are willing to go in practical means; a Clan that is seen to have deviated too badly from Kerensky's vision tends to be dealt with collectively by a vote in the Clan Council, not by any individual Clan taking matters into their own hands.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Clans settled behind a giant nebula that made it impossible for them or the Inner Sphere to see or contact each other from the other side (given the stellar distances between the two this was mostly academic anyway). The Warden philosophy wished for the Clans to remain there, apart from the Inner Sphere except for when the need was direst. Following the Wars of Reaving, all Clans deemed 'tainted' by contact with the Inner Sphere were banished from Clan space and the remaining Home Clans have created the Bastion Philosophy to ensure it stays that way.
• History Repeats:
  • Operation KLONDIKE was basically the Clans' version of the Reunification Wars - a war of conquest to not only bring resources into the conquering power's reach, but also to unify the newly-formed conquering power. And then it repeats again with Operation REVIVAL, with the Inner Sphere Successor States getting their own chance to feel the heel of the conquerors' jackboot (though putting up a markedly more successful resistance).
  • Similarly, the Wars of Reaving was basically the Clans' version of the Jihad - a party of fundamentalists (The Word of Blake under The Master and Clan Steel Viper under Brett Andrews) rejecting changes to their society that had been set in motion by the Clans and Inner Sphere coming into contact again, and seeking to 'purify' their own society so they could unite and destroy the other - started an internal war that ignored most standards and rules of war that had been obeyed up to that point and ultimately ended up 'succeeding' by being so destructive that everything was set back decades, if not centuries. Both also led to the rise of a singular leader (Devlin Stone and Stanislov N'Buta) whose writings and ideology became highly influential on their society in the decades to come.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • The main reason the Clans' invasion failed was because they were used to small-scale, ritualized combat and unprepared for a large-scale strategical campaign against a foe with no concept of 'fair play'. ComStar ended up stopping the entire Clan invasion for fifteen years by convincing them to a large-scale Trial by Combat (with Earth as the prize if the Clans won) and then fortifying the planet that the battle would take place on and fighting as ruthless and dirty as possible^note To wit: defense in depth, hit-and-run tactics, human wave tactics, and so on. The Clans also stuck to their time-tested method of "underbidding" the battle to get first rights to fight: the Clan that bid the least amount of forces had the honor of dropping into battle first, and so were horrendously unprepared to face off against the overwhelming firepower that ComStar brought to bear on them. Clan Jade Falcon alone lost 78% of their equipment, with 32% destroyed outright, and the rest damaged so far beyond the point of repair as to be useless anyway. The other Clans didn't fare much better. The Battle of Tukayyid shattered Clan society, as everything that they believed to be good, right and true about combat was proven wrong.
  • As history progresses through the Jihad and Dark Age into the ilClan era, the surviving Invader Clans come to terms with the fact that they have to find a balance between traditional Clan honor and pragmatism to survive in the Inner Sphere... except for Jade Falcon under Malvina Hazen, who slams the pendulum to the other side by throwing out not just Clan honor but any sense of proportionality, restraint, or mercy. It ends disastrously for her and her Clan, demonstrating that while the Clans' inflexible traditions may have been a handicap, going to the opposite extreme is no way to maintain a stable and functional society.
• Hufflepuff House: Any Clan not named Wolf, Jade Falcon, Ghost Bear or Smoke Jaguar^note the four original Invader Clans, in other words; halfway through the invasion Clans Steel Viper, Diamond Shark, and Nova Cat were added to the Invasion, but received very limited focus is essentially this, having limited effects on the Battletech-verse outside a few fluff pieces in the sourcebooks. It's telling that the majority of the non-Invading Clans were wiped out (and the survivors went into permanent isolation) pretty much the moment after the Great Refusal ended their threat. Clan Diamond Shark receives probably the most mentions due to being a Proud Merchant Race, Clan Nova Cat played a noteworthy role in Operation BULLDOG, and Clan Steel Viper kicked off the Wars of Reaving, but odds are if you're reading about a Clan, it's one of those original four Invader Clans.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Toyed with. With the technology advantage the Clans have, the only reason that the Inner Sphere even stands a chance during their initial invasion is because only four (later six) of the eighteen Clans in existence at that point took part in the invasion, and even then they were losing badly until ComStar made their play at Tukayyid despite the Clans only bringing the minimum amount of force they think they need to win to a battle. However, the Clans that did come were apparently the best of the best, using their best equipment, while their second-line units were typically equipped with mildly upgraded Star League designs (which were still better than most of what the Inner Sphere had in use). Task Force SERPENT found out the hard way that when the Clans stop screwing around, even a large force of elite troops will still get devastated. If the Clans had all come and fought as a single unit (instead of trying to outperform one another) with their full arsenals, the Inner Sphere could have lost. Especially since, as Clan Smoke Jaguar proved, having WarShips when your enemy does not is the ultimate trump card - if you don't care about taking your objective in anything remotely resembling one piece. This trope is also a large part of their military doctrine, as they only "bid" the minimum forces they think they'll need to win a battle to avoid waste and gain honor, as opposed to the Inner Sphere where attacking with maximum amount of force possible is standard procedure. But the commander who wins the bid (committing the fewest forces) can call down previous bids as reinforcements if needed, even to the opening bid (which is traditionally everything available at the time and location of the battle), though doing so involves a serious loss of face.
• Indentured Servitude: Clan warriors can take prisoners and keep them as "bondsmen." The amount of time a bondsman stays in servitude is decided by his bondholder. Afterwards, the bondsman is either returned home with little loss of honor or inducted into his new Clan.
• Instant-Win Condition: In-universe, to the Clans, whichever Clan reaches Terra first will become the ilClan, essentially the ruling Clan of the newest Star League. Clan Wolf appears to have done it. Granted, even if they had managed to seize Terra during the invasion, it would have been an empty victory - the Successor States would never have rolled over and joined a Star League forced into existence by the Clans.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Honor and respect in most Clans is pretty much entirely reserved for the Warrior caste, even though the Scientist caste was at least as responsible for the Clans' initial successes against the Inner Sphere as the superior weapons they developed allowed Clan 'Mechs to carry more and better weapons than Inner Sphere 'Mechs, as well as that the genetic engineering behind Trueborn Clanners is the work of the Scientist caste. This eventually lead to a revolt among the Scientist caste, and while the revolt was put down, it cost a great many lives and a vast amount of materiel. It's also telling that the Clans which put the least emphasis on the sole glory of the Warriors, such as Ghost Bear, were among the ones least affected by the revolt. And the lack of respect doesn't just apply to strict scientists, but also technicians, engineers, merchants, bureaucrats, and all manner of other non-combat personnel whose work is nonetheless vital to the success of the Warriors at the tip of the spear.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The Clans follow a code of honor called zellbrigen, which emphasizes fair combat, from hand to hand duels all the way up to the conquest of entire planets. The code was formed to minimize loss of life and resources after the SLDF fled known space and settled on resource-poor planets. It essentially prohibits using overwhelming force in the name of honor, which makes sense to Clanners and completely baffles Spheroids, who are more interested in winning than fighting honorably and tend to use everything they've got in a fight regardless of what the other side has on hand. Notably, most of the Clans are willing to suspend zellbrigen and get serious against foes they deem dishonorable, which usually happens right after said foe breaks the code themselves. Clanners will challenge targets and focus on single combat, while the Spheroids make free use of massed fire - which tended to cause problems with the technological advantage the Clanners had in weaponry.
• Lightning Bruiser: As a general rule, Clan 'Mechs are very fast and incredibly well-armed for their mass. However, Clan 'Mechs generally lack endurance as most of their configurations make use of ballistics and only really carry enough ammo for a few engagements, and their armor is usually less overwhelming than their firepower. Their heavy use of high-technology equipment in their designs makes each individual 'Mech far more expensive than Inner Sphere designs. These drawbacks don't matter much in ritualized Clan combat that focuses on rapid, low-number duels, but are serious problems in attritional warfare, such as what ComStar subjected them to on Tukayyid. Some later designs learned from this with greater reliance on energy-based weapon configurations.
• Mad Scientist: Members of the Scientist Caste are generally reasonable people, but members of the secret society within the caste known as The Society were well within this trope.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: In-Universe example. The inaccurate holovid about the First Somerset Strikers might be anti-Clan propaganda but it's actually pretty popular among the Clans, even among the Warrior caste. Jade Falcon is an obvious exception, though even they had to admit Nicholai Malthus's portrayal wasn't too far from the truth.
• Might Makes Right: The Trial of Refusal permits a warrior to overturn any vote, so long as they can win in combat against forces representing the majority. Downplayed in that the odds for the Trial are equal to the odds by which the vote succeeded by. Lose a vote by two-to-one or less, and you have a decent shot at your Trial. Lose by four-, five-, eight-, sixteen-to-one, on the other hand...
• Mirroring Factions: Pretty much the entire second book of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy is pointing this out between the Clans and the Inner Sphere. While the Inner Sphere leadership on Outreach is engaged in petty political bickering and infighting fueled by centuries of bad blood as they try to come together and defend against the Clan Invasion, back on the Clan homeworld of Strana Mechty, the Clans...are engaged in petty political bickering and infighting fueled by centuries of bad blood as they try and come together to renew the invasion.
• Mistaken for Aliens: Their technology was so advanced compared to the Inner Sphere that they were initially mistaken for aliens when they invaded.
• National Weapon:
  • As 'Mechs are designed by individual Clans, most Clans have at least one iconic 'Mech they exclusively produce, or at least use heavily and is associate with them.
  • As of the Jihad, most of the larger Clans created Totem 'Mechs, a 'Mech created by that Clan that plays to the strengths of their doctrine and is designed to resemble the Clan's animal totem.
• No Place for a Warrior:
  • When the SLDF-in-Exile landed in the Kerensky Cluster, most of their equipment was mothballed and most of the career soldiers (and their families who came along) who had just spent almost two decades fighting an incredibly bloody and destructive civil war were forced to test out of the military and pick up a different job. Most of them were less than pleased about this, which lead to a civil war and a second Exodus of people who became the Clans.
  • When Ulric Kerensky was Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee for the last time, one of the charges against him was genocide on the basis that his agreement to a fifteen-year truce meant that an entire generation of Clan warriors would be condemned to a time of peace, and thus unable to find glory in war. The Clans don't do well with peacetime, being a culture focused around eternal war and conquest.
• Number Two: Each Clan is lead by a Khan, who also has a second-in-command called a saKhan (usually promoted alongside the new Khan) who is automatically promoted to Khan in case of a death on the battlefield to maintain cohesion and chain of command. Khan and saKhan rarely go into battle alongside each other for this reason. This innovation was created by Nicholas Kerensky on the spot when it became obvious to him that the founding Battle Couple of Clan Ghost Bear would not accept being split up or forced into an Unequal Pairing by his 'one Khan' decree.
• Only One Name: The vast majority of Clan society. Only a few trueborn warriors can take the Trial of Bloodright to gain the right to use a Bloodname, the surname of a genetic ancestor.
  • The Scientist Caste has a practice of awarding unofficial surnames, those of great scientists of the past, for exceptional work in their field. They keep this tradition very quiet from the Warriors.
  • In Clan occupation zones, Clanners will refuse to address conquered Spheroids by their surnames. Spheroids sometimes continue to use them as a quiet act of defiance.
• Outside-Context Problem: Initially, they were one to the Inner Sphere. Three hundred years of mostly stagnant warfare between five interstellar empires who were all relatively evenly matched. Then suddenly, a massive army appears from beyond the edge of known space, using 'Mech designs that look like nothing anyone's ever seen before and equipped with weaponry and equipment that's vastly superior to anything produced even during the golden age of the Star League. They bulldozed through everyone in their path and it was openly wondered if they were even human.
• The Peter Principle: An inherent issue to the Clans' meritocracy is that while any promotion will be based on the aspirant's merit and skill in their current position (as well as their skill at arms, in order to succeed at the Trial of Position), little thought is given to their aptitude for their new position. As a result, unlike the born-to-rule nobles of the Inner Sphere (which have their own problems), Clan leaders can vary wildly in competence: Some are able to easily adapt to their greater responsibility, some find their previous excellence at frontline combat and commanding small units entirely unsuited to taking control of a Cluster, Galaxy or Clan, and some people who would be excellent officer or politician material strike out prematurely because they lost a Trial at one point.
• Planet of Hats: Each of the twenty clans had its own gimmick and position in Clan society, explained In-Universe as a result of the quirks and outlooks of its founding Khan. Diamond Shark are the Proud Merchant Race, Hell's Horses are the only ones left in the Clans who believe in combined arms tactics, Ghost Bear are the Mighty Glacier Clan, Smoke Jaguar The Berserker, Jade Falcon Honor Before Reason, Clan Wolf the (comparatively) Combat Pragmatist Clan, and so on.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Clan's biggest and proudest hat. Subverted, however, in that the Clans centuries of ritualistic trials and combat training made them easy to strategically outmaneuver and wear down before they could even reach Terra.
• Put on a Bus: After ripping each other apart during the Wars of Reaving, the few remaining Homeworld Clans destroyed all the HPG stations on the Exodus Road, effectively cutting themselves off from the Inner Sphere and haven't been heard from since.
• Raised by the Community: Clans do not have family units. Instead, both trueborn and freeborn children are raised in communal Crèches. The only exception to this is Clan Ghost Bear, where freeborn children are raised by their parents and Crèches are treated more like day cares.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Clan Hell's Horses winds up with one in Clan Stone Lion after the Horses are Abjured by the Homeworld Clans.
• Rite-of-Passage Name Change: The Bloodname, a rite by which a Clan warrior can take on the surname of their genetic ancestor^note as determined by their mitochondria. Bloodnames are required to vote in Clan matters and is the only way a warrior's genes will be stored for further use in their eugenics programme, and so competition for a Bloodname is fierce amongst candidates.
• The Scottish Trope: The Not-Named Clan (Wolverine). Even centuries after its Annihilation, mentioning the Clan by name is forbidden, and Clanners will still go to any length to eradicate any traces of the Clan they discover. And woe betide anyone who even uses the word "wolverine" innocently in conversation in earshot of a clanner, or even worse, tries to compliment a clanner by comparing them to a wolverine. Did we mention that one of the more common, above-average medium 'Mechs is the WVR-6R Wolverine? (What the Clans would otherwise call the Wolverine IIC, a version of the Inner Sphere 'Mech updated with Clan technology, they instead call the Conjurer.)
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • The Clans came into being as the result of a two-tiered form of this, as the SLDF members (and their families) followed Aleksander Kerensky into exile in the Periphery rather than fight for one of the Great Houses. Then, when Kerensky passed away and the already-fragile proto-state fragmented, his son Nicholas led his remaining supporters into another exile, where they became the Clans. For both of them, the Clans eventually came back - as conquerors.
  • In the lead-up to the Wars of Reaving, most of the Invader Clans (those that invaded the Inner Sphere during Operation REVIVAL) moved as much of their military and civilian assets as they could to the Inner Sphere. Clan Ghost Bear in particular managed to covertly move almost their entire civilian population out of Clan space in secret before their rivals even realised it. Those that remained were eventually driven out or Absorbed by the Homeworld clans.
• Shadow Archetype: The Clans represent many of the worst aspects of major Inner Sphere powers, only twisted to horrifying Blue-and-Orange Morality extremes.
  • Like the Draconis Combine, they're an aggressive, ultramilitaristic culture that embraces a brutal warrior ethos and makes absolutely no pretenses of being a democracy and finds the very idea of constitutional government absurd. They both tend to favor lighter, more heavily armed mechs and a ritualistic approach to combat and war brought on by resource issues and a limited economy and both have profound logistical issues. They even both fetishize the number five and incorporate it into all their military organizations. But the Draconis Combine clings to Earth culture like nothing else and still has a robust set of cultural achievements, while the Clans have completely discarded seemingly all human ties in the revolutionary pursuit of an alien new morality and "downtime" is barely a thing that exists. While the Combine can sometimes discard hidebound honor for expediency, the Clans had their whole way of life shattered trying to do the same. And while the Combine has lost wars because its troops were ashamed of the things they did out of Blind Obedience, the Clans barely see civilians as people and have instead lost wars because the people they're conquering quickly grow to hate them more than even the heaviest-handed Inner Sphere powers.
  • Like the Capellan Confederation, Clan culture almost always builds a totalitarian police state, where individuals are sorted into castes and those in the lower castes are basically enslaved to feed the war machine. But while the Confederation only puts the lowest caste into indentured servitude and has a civilian government, most Clans operate as a de-facto military dictatorship where every caste but the Warriors are slaves of the Warriors, and there's a pretty good argument the Warriors themselves are slaves of the system they serve. The Capellans also have a robust welfare state where the citizens' needs are dealt with while every Clanner can expect to be all-but worked to death; even the Warrior caste tends to be literally used up young to feed the war machine. While Capellans actively encourage citizens to try to advance through their caste systems and achieve social mobility, the Clans' obsession with fatalism and eugenics instead traps individuals in castes from the day they're born, and while the Capellans' elaborate system of meritocratic exams attempts to test how well the applicant would perform in their new position, the Clans' trials and honor-duels only test how well those seeking advancement would perform in a very specific set of skills that might or might not translate at all into their higher rank, leading to overwhelming institutional problems.
  • Like the Free Worlds League, the Clans are a disorganized and ununited polity riven with infighting and factionalism that makes it difficult for them to act together and get things done. But while in the Free Worlds League this feeds a culture of deep individualism, personal liberty, and mercantile innovation, among the Clans it's just one more way in which they keep up their constant Allowed Internal Wars with one another.
  • Like the Federated Suns, they claim to be the true heirs to the Star League's idealism while actually representing a twisted mockery of it. Both profess high-minded equality but don't live up to it in practice, the Federated Suns through a constitution that doesn't actually offer popular government and the Clans through the official assertion that all castes are equal while in practice the Warriors' monopoly on actual political power means that they're more equal than others. But while the Federated Suns have their flaws, with a government that looks a lot more like Imperial Germany than Eagle Land, they can at least argue that their constitution functionally protects many individual rights and liberties, so they're generally A Lighter Shade of Grey compared to their neighbors. The Clans make no pretense of any of these things, enslaving and even committing genocide on every world they conquer, and until the Blakists started flinging nukes around like they were going out of style, they were the greater evil beside whom everyone else was A Lighter Shade of Black. And while the Federated Suns are failing to live up to their positive ideals, the Clans' extermination of the Not-Named Clan happened because the Not-Named Clan was shirking some of the more oppressive and authoritarian rules of their civilization, and the rest of the Clans and their founder murdered them all rather than admit their cruel ways might not be Necessarily Evil.
  • It's a bit more tenuous for the Lyran Commonwealth, but both polities struggle with The Peter Principle, since their military promotion structure involves skillsets and qualifications orthogonal to their actual job performance (political, social, and economic clout vs. honor dueling for position), and while the Clans claim to abhor waste, they tend to be penny-wise and pound-foolish to the extent that in practice they're still just as wasteful as any unimaginative Lyran, just relying on their ridiculous technological edge to compensate for their incompetence rather than their ridiculous economic advantage.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy: The Battle of Tukayyid was this for the Crusader clans, followed by the Great Refusal (which Annihilated Clan Smoke Jaguar and saw the Clans defeated by the Inner Sphere on their home turf) for the rest of the Clans. The Smoke Jaguar Annihilation and the defeat during the Great Refusal directly lead to the banishment of all the Invader Clans from the Clan homeworlds, the Wars of Reaving and the surviving Home Clans permanently cutting themselves off from the Inner Sphere, convinced that nothing good can ever come of it.
• The Spartan Way: Trueborn are trained this way. Eugenically selected, bred from birth to be warriors, raised for their specific field of combat from childhood, then pitted against each other in live-fire conflicts to determine their fitness. Only the best even survive to adulthood and the battlefield, and only the very best can win the honor of a Bloodname. By numbers, they are usually raised in lots of 100, of which 20 become warriors, the rest dying or (roughly half) washing out and getting assigned to other castes. Some Clans like Steel Viper have an even harsher training regimen that results in fewer warriors overall, but higher-skilled ones.
  • All Freebirth Clanners are also technically permitted to apply for the Warrior Caste (due to the Clans' founding belief in meritocracy) and undergo warrior training. Freebirth training varies much more significantly from Clan to Clan, but is generally much laxer and much less comprehensive (on top of institutional discrimination from their instructors and support personnel), which almost inevitably leads to the Freebirths all washing out when they're put up against Trueborn in the live-fire exercises.
  • On the tabletop, Clan Trueborn warriors have better piloting and gunnery skills than Inner Sphere pilots on average. The Clans put this down to the glory of their breeding program genetically selecting them to be warriors first, but it's heavily implied that whatever benefits the breeding program offers peaked long ago, and the skill of the average Clan warrior has far more to do with this trope than them being Designer Babies. Exceptionally skilled Inner Sphere warriors like Kai Allard-Liao and Phelan Kell routinely besting the best of the Clans, as well as Natasha Kerensky, effortlessly kicking the ass of warriors nine and ten generations "improved" on her, are the main points in favor of this interpretation.
• Taught by Experience: As an adjunct to Asskicking Leads to Leadership. While the Clan Trials of Position (and, in general, Clan methods of training and educating warriors) places no emphasis on tactical, strategic, logistical, political, or leadership skills, Clan officers who want to be successful have to develop those skills. This primarily comes from the bidding process: when a Clan force wants to take an objective, two competing commanders will bid for the right to lead the attack, paring down forces until they arrive at the absolute minimum amount of force they think is necessary to win, the commander with the lowest bid wins the right to lead the attack. Bidding wisely to win the right to lead the battle requires understanding the strategic and logistical nature of the battle you'll be fighting, and knowing some psychology to read or rattle your opponent can only help. Then you have to actually win with the forces you bid (you can call down reinforcements in the form of previous bids, though this will cost them much, all, or more besides the status you would have won without doing so), requiring tactics and leadership. To capitalize on the battles you've successfully bid and won, to earn sponsorship to fight for a Bloodname, you'll need to learn to curry political favor with the Bloodnamed warriors of your Bloodhouse.
• Token Good Teammate: The Warden Clans, who preferred to protect the Inner Sphere as opposed to the Crusaders, who wanted to return to (read: conquer) the Inner Sphere and reestablish the Star League under the ideals of their founder, Nicholas Kerensky. Warden Clans of note include Clan Wolf, Clan Ghost Bear (who were staunch Crusaders until the Great Refusal), Clan Nova Cat (who were also Crusaders until the end of the Clan Invasion) and Clan Coyote. By 3145, Clan Nova Cat has become all but extinct, the Coyotes were all but destroyed in the Reavings and the Ghost Bears have Gone Native; the only 'Wardens' left are the Renegade Splinter Faction that calls itself Clan Wolf-in-Exile. The Warden philosophy was noted to wane every passing year with no such external threat materializing; by the time the Inner Sphere did face such an external threat, it was in the form of the overwhelming majority of Crusaders.
• Trial by Combat: Virtually all decisions made in Clan Society are either this or subject to overruling by this. Combat trials are used for everything from determining an individual warrior's status within their Clan to the settling of personal or property disputes. Any legislative or judicial decisions made by the Clans may also be overruled if their proponents are defeated in combat by the opposing side. The Trials typically have a ritualized structure: for many, the challenger chooses the means by which the fight will occur (Augmented or Unaugmented, i.e. with 'Mechs/BattleArmor/AeroSpace fighters/etc. or hand-to-hand), while the challenged chooses the location of the battle. In the Trial of Bloodright, it is randomly decided which warrior will choose to how to fight and which will choose where to fight. Trials of Absorption and Annihilation are as close to "real" warfare as the Clans typically get (and these have sometimes spilled over into "real" warfare, usually with devastating results). There are seven types of Trials:
  • Trial of Grievance: Basically a duel. Two warriors with a dispute enter a Circle of Equals and duke it out. The size of the circle varies based on the rules of the duel, which can be anything from a fistfight to an aerospace dogfight. A Trial of Grievance is technically a Duel to the Death but deaths are actually rare; the rule is only to discourage unnecessary Trials. Technically, Trials of Grievance are reserved for highly-placed Warriors, and only occur after all other attempts to resolve the dispute (up to and including bringing the matter before the Grand Council) have failed. In reality, "unofficial" Trials of Grievance happen routinely, especially among particularly prideful Clans like Jade Falcon, as warriors constantly insult each other and demand satisfaction in the form of duels. These unofficial Trials are technically illegal and thus practically never to the death.
  • Trial of Position: Used to determine career advancement. There are two basic forms, the first to test into the Warrior Caste in the first place. After completing their sibko training, a warrior will generally be paired with another, and three opposing targets will be placed for each testing warrior. The testing warriors are denied communications, but can, if they choose, attempt to work together by planning beforehand (this almost never happens). A testing warrior must down one opponent to pass and graduate to the rank of Warrior. A second kill will let them enter service one rank higher, two kills two ranks higher, and so on. Defeating all three of your opponents is rare but possible; defeating three of yours and one of your partner's is all but impossible (only Natasha Kerensky actually did it, though Kai Allard-Liao, in a Wolf's Dragoons training exercise based heavily on the Trial of Position, downed five opponents). The second version occurs when a higher rank becomes available, usually because the person holding it died in battle. Everyone interested in the promotion fights tournament-bracket style until a single winner remains, they get the promotion. It's rare but possible to directly challenge a superior officer in attempt to claim his rank, but the Clan Council will probably ask for your reasons, and they'd better be really, really good ones.
  • Trial of Bloodright: Used to determine which Clan warriors are allowed to use a Bloodname (basically a surname taken from whichever one of the 800 original Clan warriors they're descended from). Each Bloodname has up to twenty-five (sometimes less) Bloodheritages attached to it. Different Bloodnames can be more or less prestigious (having the Kerensky Bloodname means you're matrilineally descended from the man who founded the Clans), and within that Bloodname, certain Bloodheritages may be more or less prestigious (Ulric Kerensky waited for a specific Kerensky Bloodheritage to become available because he wanted to be part of its pedigree; Taman Malthus took a Bloodheritage no one else wanted because its previous holder had been disgraced at the Battle of Twycross). When the holder of a Bloodname dies, that Bloodheritage becomes available to be fought over. Each holder of the same Bloodname can nominate a Warrior to the competition (even the deceased Warrior, if they thought ahead and named their chosen fighter in their will), with another competitor coming out of the Grand Melee, a free-for-all for anyone who wants the Bloodname but isn't prestigious enough to have a sponsor.
  • Trial of Possession: Used to settle disputes between Clans over ownership of assets. This can include land, weapons, genetic material, etc. Typically fought by the aggressor stating their intention to claim a certain objective, the defender allocating forces to defend it and informing the attacker what the defenses will be, then the attacker bidding a force to attempt to take the objective. Rarely, Trials of Possession can be determined by alternative means: single fistfights, wrestling matches, and even arm-wrestling matches have been used among the Clans at various points, Phelan Wolf was bid alone to take the world of Gunzberg by essentially negotiating the terms of its surrender, Clan Nova Cat defected to the Inner Sphere settling Trials of Possession with a coin toss (and calling "edge"), and memorably, the Rasalhague world of Sheliak challenged Clan Ghost Bear invaders to a game of American Football as the Trial of Possession (see Funny for how that turned out).
  • Trial of Refusal: When the Clan Council or Grand Council votes on a matter, the losing side can declare a Trial by Combat against the winning side. However, the forces fighting in the Trial will be proportionate to the number of votes on each side. If a Clan is outvoted two-to-one, they face a force twice their size. If they're outvoted ten-to-one, they face a force ten times their size. Much of the political maneuverings at the Councils is about paring down or beefing up the odds of the inevitable Trial of Refusal.
    • Trial of Reaving: A sub-type of Trial of Refusal, a Trial of Reaving is used against a Bloodname if the Blood Legacy it is attached to is tainted somehow. A successful Trial of Reaving essentially bars a number of that Bloodname from use, permanently reducing the number of Bloodnamed associated with it (normally by 1-5, though a Bloodname can be fully Reaved and essentially exterminated). A Reaving is always called by one Bloodline against another; whichever side loses the Trial suffers the Reaving. Trials of Reaving were used as a Casus Belli by Brett Andrews in his Wars of Reaving, who re-interpreted them into an effective death sentence against Bloodnames 'tainted' by Inner Sphere exposure (and promptly Reaved the Bloodline of Diamond Shark saKhan Labov by way of a demonstration).
  • Trial of Absorption: When a Clan is deemed to be unfit to continue on its own, a Grand Council or ambitious rivals may declare a Trial of Absorption, fighting for the right to fold all of that Clan's assets into another Clan. A Clan might be Absorbed because of huge losses in battle, or simple failure to expand their territory, resource base, and personnel levels to a point where they are considered viable by the other Clans.^note After the Refusal War, both Clan Jade Falcon and the new Crusader Clan Wolf realized they had been mauled badly enough it was only a matter of time before one of their rivals tried to Absorb them, so both launched attacks to prove they were still strong. The Trial of Absorption is pretty much equally a tool of political threat and (usually) the ultimate means by a which a Clan might deal permanently with a hated rival Clan.
  • Trial of Annihilation: A punishment only for the most extreme crimes. A person is erased from Clan history entirely through the destruction of their genetic legacy. Warriors are killed while non-warriors are sterilized and Absorbed by other Clans. This Trial has been leveled against individuals, units, and even entire Clans. This punishment is so severe it can only be approved by a unanimous vote.
• Un-person: The harshest Clan punishments involve removal of individuals, bloodlines, or Bloodnames from Clan lore and their eugenics program. At the extreme, entire Clans have been erased from history (see Trial of Annihilation above). At it's mildest, this takes the form of Abjuration: essentially exiling the offending party from the Clans and denying they ever existed (this was done to Clan Wolf-In-Exile after the Refusal War, and any Clan that migrated to the Inner Sphere after the Wars of Reaving).
• Utopia Justifies the Means: At least as far as they're concerned. Between Nicholas Kerensky's creative revisionism of his father's beliefs and wishes, and the Clanners themselves rewriting their history to be more self-serving, Clanners had a distorted version of Inner Sphere history. As a result, most Clanners (particularly those with Crusader leanings) favored conquering the Inner Sphere, imposing Clan culture on them, and grinding down any old national or cultural loyalties, no matter the cost.
• Verbal Tic: Members of the Clans, particularly Trueborn warriors, do not use contractions.^note At least none recognizable as such by present day English speakers. Many terms invented by the Clans are in fact contractions - quiaff and quineg for "query affirmative/negative", batchall for "battle challenge", etc. Using one in a Clanner's presence is treated like cursing in polite company.
• War Is Glorious: Their entire society is based around it, and their attitudes of using their various Trials to minimize waste let them divorce themselves from the real consequences of war. Most of the point of Operation BULLDOG, Task Force Serpent, and the Annihilation of Clan Smoke Jaguar was for the Inner Sphere to drive home to the Clans the lesson that the Inner Sphere learned the hard way during the Succession Wars: no, real war is not glorious, War Is Hell.
• We Have Reserves: Zig-zagged. On the one hand, Clan culture abhors waste and seeks to minimize it wherever possible, and that includes human life, so Clan batchalls involve bidding the lowest amount of forces a commander thinks is necessary to win. However, precisely zero value is placed on any single person, and a warrior past thirty years old who hasn't won a Bloodname is seen as over the hill and only useful for solahma units. At best, solahma units get third- or fourth-grade equipment and are expected to use it solely in the pursuit of an honorable death (the over-gunned and under-armored Hunchback IIC is a prime example of the kind of 'Mech made to be a solahma warrior's last ride). At worst, they're handed a laser rifle and told to kill as many enemy BattleMechs as possible. And despite being founded by a group of people who had just dealt with two horrendously destructive civil wars, the Clans are a warrior culture who settle most things through combat despite war being inherently wasteful. This also played a part in the invasion - the Inner Sphere views many pieces of technology as untouchable because they're basically irreplaceable or extremely difficult to build like JumpShips, and avoids Orbital Bombardment or other cases of massive destruction because they spent centuries hammering each other with every weapon they had to the point of massive technological decline. The Clans seemed unconcerned about collateral damage and can rebuild whatever they destroy, and can and will freely attack JumpShips or a planet's industrial base.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: The Clans were like this when they invaded the Inner Sphere. Their warriors were well trained and equipped with 'Mechs that were far superior to anything the Inner Sphere had to offer, but three centuries of living in isolation and a society where short, decisive fights between small forces was the norm left them unprepared to fight a protracted war. Once the Inner Sphere realized this, they were able to exploit it and began using the Clans' tactics against them, culminating in the Battle of Tukayyid, where Comstar handed them a powerful defeat that forced them to abide by a 15 year truce. This loss caused most of the Clans who were involved to get a clue and start actually using real tactics against the Inner Sphere.
• Wicked Wastefulness: In-universe, this is how the Clans originally viewed the Inner Sphere- rich and bloated on its excessive consumption of frivolities. In reality, a big part of why the Inner Sphere was so much more economically powerful than the Clans (aside from having a considerably larger population base and number of planets) is that the Clans' frequently stated abhorrence to waste was done in a penny-wise, pound-foolish manner. They saw it as a wasteful extravagance to actually invest in anything other than the warrior caste that ran everything: low caste laborers and merchants were provided with basic necessities as long as they could work, then left to die once they were unable to. Small wonder that within a few decades of invading the Inner Sphere, most of the invader Clans decided that they actually liked the Inner Sphere's lifestyle better.
• Written by the Winners:
  • Over the centuries of their isolation from the Inner Sphere, the Clans developed a more self-serving version of their history. Instead of the Exodus being a desperate move by Aleksandr Kerensky to keep the SLDF from having to fight in the coming Succession Wars and to spare the Inner Sphere from the destructive firepower they wielded, the Clans believe they were cast out by Inner Sphere barbarians. Instead of leaving to build something new, they were driven out and forced to leave to preserve what was left of the Star League. As a result, Clanners were driven to return to the Inner Sphere to "set things right," and hated Spheroids on principle.
  • In their more recent history, the Clans have been known to alter their own history for self-serving reasons: inflicting damnatio memoriae on the Wolverines aside, Khan Jason Karrige was effectively Reaved under the cover of a "lab accident" and saKhan Joyce Merrell was flagged as killed during Operation Klondike after her actual death decades later due to her regret over her involvement in the events surrounding the Wolverines.

Clan Wolf

In General

The Emblem of Clan Wolf

"We are Clan Wolf, children of Kerensky. We carry the honor of his name on our shoulders as our fathers did before. The Remembrance speaks to us of the evil in Man's will, of the reasons for exodus, and the rites of the traveler. Arcadia is our destiny and our right. Enlightenment is our gift. By the bloodnames of the founders we must return. Return and protect that which is unique among the stars. Terra awaits us as it was written. We are the last of the Wardens, the sole hope for the Earth."

One of the original twenty Clans as envisioned by Nicholas Kerensky. Clan Wolf's excellent performance during Operation Klondike saw the ilKhan himself favour the Clan with exclusive access to his Bloodname, marking them as one of the most important Clans by default.

Clan Wolf is a study in contrasts, often mixing and matching the best the other Clans had to offer and seeking a middle path instead of devoting themselves entirely to one doctrine or specialty. They led the Warden movement, although many Wolf warriors were Crusaders. Clan Wolf was one of the four invader Clans, and by far the most successful. Following the Refusal War against Clan Jade Falcon the Clan was split in two, with most of their traditional Clan assets and younger warriors building a Crusader empire in their Inner Sphere holdings while many of the older warriors and their Inner Sphere bondsmen split off to create Clan Wolf-in-Exile, joining the Inner Sphere.

During the Dark Age era the Wolves up and abandon their Occupation Zone to migrate deeper into the Inner Sphere, carving out the Wolf Empire from conquered Lyran and Free Worlds systems. Driving ever-closer to Terra they finally invade humanity's birthworld in 3151, crushing the Republic and winning the ilClan Trial against the Jade Falcons. Now - in theory - supreme among Clans, they've announced the reestablishment of the Star League under their ilKhan Alaric Ward.

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• Action Politician: The Wolves were renowned for their political savvy and skill at bidding. Despite the Crusader faction having far more clans in it than the Wardens, Wolf and Coyote alone managed to keep the Crusaders in check.
• The Alliance: Clan Wolf maintained a more or less permanent alliance with Clan Coyote that made up the lion's share of the Warden political block. This alliance was shattered after the Refusal War, when Clan Wolf became a Crusader Clan.
• Always Someone Better: Clan Wolf was the strongest of the Clans for most of their history, only briefly eclipsed in importance by Clan Smoke Jaguar shortly before the Clan Invasion took place. This seldom made them many friends outside Clan Coyote, with Jade Falcon in particular eyeing their position.
• Combat Pragmatist: Not quite to the degree of Clan Diamond Shark and Snow Raven, but the Wolves are less obsessed with honor than the average Clan and followed Ulric's dictates in suspending zellbrigen for the Clan Invasion right off the bat.
• The Empire: By the Dark Age, Crusader Clan Wolf had formed the Wolf Empire, and were intending to conquer Terra to become the ilClan.
• The Exile: Following the Refusal War, the Warden Wolves who fled to the Inner Sphere were Abjured, becoming Clan Wolf-In-Exile. Come the Wars of Reaving, Crusader Clan Wolf was Abjured (along with all the other Clans who left Clan space rather than get caught up in Brett Andrews' insanity). This ultimately makes Clan Wolf-In-Exile an exiled faction of an exiled faction.
• Face–Heel Turn: Following the Refusal War and the splitting of Clan Wolf, the remaining clan became Crusaders under Khan Vlad Ward. The Crusader Wolves would continue to threaten the rest of the Inner Sphere.
• Glad I Thought of It: Clan Wolf continued to adopt more societal innovations from the Not-Named Clan following Nicholas Kerensky's death, such as Caste reassignment for non-Warriors.
• National Weapon: The Timber Wolf is the prototypical Clan Wolf 'Mech. Designed and created by the Clan, it is exclusively produced by them and only available to other Clans through salvage or trade.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Clan Wolf-in-Exile, who continue to uphold the Warden traditions of their forebears despite the rest of Clan Wolf's adoption of the Crusader philosophy.
• The Rival: Clan Jade Falcon, a rivalry started the moment Clan Wolf received the Kerensky bloodname. This rivalry became downplayed following the Refusal War, with khans Ward and Pryde coming together to work on a number of issues.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Long about the Clan Invasion, Clan Wolf sees the percentage of Crusaders in its ranks rise dramatically, with some holding very prominent positions. While still a Warden majority, the Crusader faction is becoming harder and harder to ignore or keep quiet, presenting many challenges to Ulric's leadership. Even Wardens like Ranna find the Truce of Tukayyid constricting, fearing that without conflict with the Inner Sphere they'll lose their chance to win glory, honor, and a Bloodname.

Nicholas Kerensky

Nicholas Kerensky, Founder of the Clans

Era(s): Succession Wars

Aleksandr Kerensky's son and founder of the Clans.

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• The Caligula: Displays hints of this after forming the Clans, as detailed in Betrayal of Ideals. Besides making up the social structure of the Clans on his own, he changes the rules whenever he feels like it. Any violation of his protocols results in temper tantrums that proceed nearly to the point of requiring a Circle of Equals. At meals, nobody is allowed to sit before he does, and he eats his steaks unseasoned, nearly raw. Conversation may not begin at the table until he finishes his meal and rests his arms on the table.
• Child Soldier: If his claims of being a resistance fighter on Terra during the Amaris Civil War are true, he was fighting during his early teenage years (Terra was liberated when he was fifteen). It's precisely because of this that some historians seriously doubt he actually fought in the resistance, insisting he was at best employed in a support capacity, or was simply a noncombatant under the protection of the resistance.
• Dead Guy Junior: Tried to play himself up as this in order to convince the world of his worthiness to succeed his father, deliberately aping Aleksandr's mannerisms and habits. It got to the point where, during Operation KLONDIKE, populations would hail the liberating General Kerensky as his father, and Nicholas would make no effort to correct them.
• Due to the Dead: Perhaps surprisingly, he engages in a bit of this in Betrayal of Ideals. First, he has tombstones made and placed on Barbados, one marking the grave of Khan Franklin Hallis (whose ascension to that rank Nicholas had rejected while Franklin was alive), the other for Khan Sarah McEvedy, though her body was not buried there. He also had oak trees planted at the site of Great Hope, one for each civilian who'd perished when Khan Karrige nuked the city. Erasing Barbados, Great Hope, and a whole Clan from history, these are the only memorials for those who fought and died to cement Nicholas' vision of the Clans.
• Frontline General: As part of his efforts to mimic his father, Nicholas would fight on the frontlines as much as he could, always at the controls of an Atlas II painted to resemble the elder Kerensky's personal Atlas.
• Founder of the Kingdom: He is the founder and creator the original 20 Clans and their way of life.
• Genghis Gambit: The real reason behind the Annihilation of the Not-Named Clan. Nicholas had created a warrior society, but warriors need enemies to fight. He didn't single them out, but once it became apparent other Clans were already aligning against them, Nicholas was perfectly happy to use them as the enemy to point the Clans as a whole at.
• Genius Bruiser: Nicholas was unhinged, paranoid, manipulative, egotistical and megalomaniacal. He also provided the philosophical and intellectual basis for Clan society, albeit with improvements that he stole credit from the likes of Sarah McEvedy for, as well as a fierce MechWarrior.
• Glad I Thought of It: Sarah McEvedy and The Not-Named Clan first drew Nicholas' ire when Sarah allowed "migration" between her castes, letting people switch to Laborers to ensure a bountiful harvest, then go back to their original caste or become a Scientist or Technician if that better suited them. Nicholas was further offended when Sarah presented her new saKhan, Franklin Hallis, because as ilKhan, Nicholas had to oversee all Trials of Position for such an important rank, and flatly refused to recognize Franklin's promotion on the basis of such unClanlike things as leadership ability, strategic and logistical skill, and efficiency as Sarah's XO. After they were Annihilated, Nicholas began allowing reassignment of caste based on testing (most notably, the ability for freeborns to test into the warrior caste on the same standards as trueborns) and did away with Trials of Position for the ranks of saKhan, Khan, and ilKhan, making them the only elected positions in Clan society. Naturally, no one pointed out these ideas had their origins with The Not-Named Clan.
• Inadequate Inheritor: The rest of the leadership of the SLDF-In-Exile saw him as this - some jumped-up kid who never fought in the Amaris Civil War trying to step into his late father's shoes.
• Intellectually Supported Tyranny: His writings form the basis of most Clan society. He's a rare case of being both the intellectual and the tyrant all at once.
• Manipulative Bastard: He not only allowed the Prinz Eugen mutiny to happen, but manipulated his brother into being involved, either to purge nonbelievers or advance his own standing.
• Morality Chain: His brother Andery was regarded as one for him by his detractors. Which made some wonder if Nicholas had something to do with Andery's rather suspicious death.
• Pet the Dog: Despite Annihilating the Not-Named Clan largely for his own personal ambitions, he does offer its second Khan Franklin Hallis one small piece of justice. Nicholas had uncovered Khan Jason Karrige's role in the nuking of Great Hope, and exposed his crimes, offering Hallis the right to execute Karrige. Which Hallis did. Via 'Mech-mounted Enhanced PPC. He also had Franklin buried (the rest of the Wolverines were left to rot where they fell), and a tombstone set marked "Khan Franklin Hallis," despite Nicholas not acknowledging the validity of Franklin's rank while he was alive, because it had not been won in a Trial of Position.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Formed the Clans in this fashion.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Nicholas created Clan society from whole cloth based on his "visions" of a perfect warrior society, and became the first ilKhan. As such, especially during the early years of the Clans, he had pretty much absolute freedom to modify or invent things as needed to keep his new society functioning. Notably, he invented first the Trial of Absorption when The Not-Named grew too troublesome, then the Trial of Annihilation when even Absorption was too good for them. He also made up the requirement that a saKhan had to win a Trial of Position for the job on the spot when Sarah McEvedy named Franklin Hallis her saKhan. When Sarah later accused him of conspiring against Clan Wolverine, he insisted he couldn't conspire, because he led the Clans.
• Theme Park Version: Tex calls Nicholas a "cultural magpie," as he built Clan society off bits and bobs of old Terran cultures that appealed to him, blending them together into something simultaneously recognizable and completely alien. This includes old caste systems reworked to fit a sci-fi setting, police state tactics common to any dictatorial regime, bushido-light combat doctrines, and so on.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Nicholas justifies everything from his falsifying the historical records and purging records of their Inner Sphere origins, to manipulating the rest of the Clans into trying to annihilate the Wolverines as necessary to create the "perfect" society.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The novel Betrayal of Ideals, as well as the Operation: KLONDIKE sourcebook, do quite a bit to tarnish both the man and his motivations, making him seem less like the heir to his father's dream and more like a narcissistic Blood Knight who wanted to play First Lord. The novel even ends with him declaring his intent to rewrite Clan history to suit his purposes.

Natasha Kerensky

Natasha Kerensky, circa 3052

Era(s): Succession Wars, Clan Invasion

Possibly the deadliest MechWarrior in history of BattleTech. Introduced as a mercenary working for the Wolf's Dragoons, both of whom are rumored to have ties with the self-exiled Star League Defense Force, she is infamous as a captain of the Black Widow Company, an elite Dragoon unit comprised of most unsavory types of people you can find in Inner Sphere.

When the Clan Invasion begun, it was revealed that the Wolf's Dragoons were the Clan reconnaissance force who have gone rogue, and that Natasha was one of the few trueborn warriors who joined it since her impatience for politics prevented her further rise in Clan society.

When the recall order from Clan Wolf arrived, she returned to help Ulric Kerensky to crush the Crusader Clan ambitions.

She died in rear guard action during the Refusal War, the wreck of her Dire Wolf Widowmaker left by the Jade Falcons where it fell as a monument to her skill.

Out-of-Universe, she was the FIRST named character in the game, back in the first boxed set.

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• Ace Custom: Downplayed since it's a Clan OmniMech and designed to be customized by its pilot, but she favors a unique combination (known as "Widowmaker") on her Dire Wolf.
• Ace Pilot: Only a few could match her in skill, like the The Bounty Hunter (with whom Natasha has a rivalry) and Kai Allard-Liao (though they never personally met each other). She's the only known Clanner to ever take out four enemies in a Trial of Position. After the Dragoons' identity as Clan advance scouts was revealed, people began claiming that her legendary skill on the battlefield was a result of using Clan technology, but sourcebooks claim her Warhammer was well-maintained but only used basic Inner Sphere technology (not even Star League-era tech).
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She was no slouch among the Dragoons, commanding a semi-independent company that later grew to battalion size, but she rose to the rank of Khan after her return to Clan Wolf.
• Blood Knight: As per Clan traditions, though she takes it a bit further.
• Death Seeker: After her lover Joshua Wolf died, she became a lot more reckless.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: During Anton Marik's revolt in 3015, Wolf's Dragoons had been fighting on Anton's side until the last days of the war. In the end The Dragoons single-handily ended the war by The Black Widows destroying Anton Marik's palace personally with Kerensky herself dropping the roof on his head. This was in revenge both for betraying the Dragoons by trying to force them to disperse and merge into the remnants of the rebels, and by using Joshua Wolf, Jamie Wolf's wife and daughters and a number of other Dragoon noncombatants and dependents as hostages to secure Wolf's good behavior, and slaughtering them all when Wolf refused to comply.
• The Dreaded: Following her aforementioned Rampage, Kerensky was one of the most feared MechWarriors in the Inner Sphere for a long time, and with good reason. Most Inner Sphere mercenaries would flee rather than face her directly, and in her cameo in the 2019 video game the mere mention of her name frightens the Marauders.
• Due to the Dead: When she was finally KIA during the War of Refusal, the Jade Falcons let the wreckage of her Dire Wolf lay where it fell out of reverent respect.
• Evil Wears Black: More like "the dreaded wears black", but her personal Warhammer and her Black Widow Company were both notably painted in all black to make everyone aware of just who they were up against.
• Fiery Redhead: In her younger days, she was noted to have fiery red hair, and she had the temprament to match.
• Generation Xerox: Her Trueborn gene-daughter Anastasia.
• Hot-Blooded: Fully intends (and succeeded) in dying guns blazing in a fight for glory and honor, and stuff your politics and intrigues and "you're-too-old-for-this" bullshit, thank you very much.
• Kill It with Fire: She finally goes down when her cockpit is incinerate by a jump jet.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has her moments.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The Black Widow".
• Never Mess with Granny: She re-qualified in a Trial of Position after answering the Dragoon recall at the age of seventy-seven, cleaning house and earning the rank of Star Colonel in the process (which requires destroying one of the other trial applicants' foes in addition to their own three).
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: After her return to the Clans, she continued to use contractions, which is considered crude amongst the Clans. And she doesn't care.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: How the Clans view her tendency above.
• The Remnant: Her preference for spider-related imagery (calling herself Black Widow, naming her 'Mech Widowmaker, calling her Clan Cluster the Wolf Spiders) indicates she's aware she's descended from remnants of Clan Widowmaker (named after an even deadlier version of a black widow spider), who were Absorbed by Clan Wolf some time ago.
• Token Evil Teammate: To the Dragoons. The Dragoons pretty much set the standard for efficiency, skill, and professionalism in mercenary units. Her Black Widows were skilled, but definitely known to be cruel and dishonorable fighters. Natasha herself is the only named Dragoon to have returned to the Clans when the Invasion began and the recall order came. Even Evil Has Standards, however, as she subscribed to the Warden perspective and her actions as Khan of the Wolves were to that end.
• Younger Than They Look: Had extensive cosmetic surgery while in the Inner Sphere to hide her true age, adding to her mystique. (Having her birth record, the Clans weren't fooled).

Ulric Kerensky

Ulric Kerensky, Khan of Clan Wolf, soon to be ilKhan

Era(s): Clan Invasion

The Khan of Clan Wolf. As a follower of the Warden philosophy, Ulric protested against the invasion of the Inner Sphere and declared the Trial of Refusal, but with odds stacked against him he lost, and as a punishment he and his clan were to take part in invasion.

Not to be discouraged, he intentionally sabotaged the invasion by out-crusading the Crusader clans, by making fast progress towards Terra while the rest of the clans were falling behind, thus spurring them to act^note He was able to do so because he was forced into the invasion: in order to invade, all Clans had to bid for it, by stating the amount of forces they would commit to the battle/invasion, and the lowest bid would win. However, Clan Wolf was already committed to the invasion, and therefore didn't have to bid to ensure that they would go. So they assessed the situation, used their knowledge of the Inner Sphere from Natasha Kerensky and Phelan Kell to prepare, and brought everything they would need for an extended campaign. The other Clans brought significantly less than they needed, out of pride, and suffered horribly for it. But while the Wolves were prepared for the war, the other clans, expecting easy victory, were logistically unprepared and spread themselves thin trying to outperform the Wolves. This eventually resulted in the battle of Tukayyid, where the Clans suffered defeat.

Years later Ulric was court-martialed for the failure of invasion, but he and his retinue led a successful defense by pointing out that while he and Clan Wolf performed excellently, it was the other Clans that failed to achieve desirable results. The discussion shifted to the idea of restarting the invasion, and in order to thwart this he declared the Clan-wide Trial of Refusal against the leader of Crusader clans and long-time rival of Wolves, Clan Jade Falcon, starting what would be known as The Refusal War.

Ulric died during the war, but his strategic maneuvers still managed to cripple the Falcons and uphold the Truce of Tukayyid.

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• Batman Gambit: Most of his gambits involved exploiting the proud warrior mentality of the Clans, especially the "proud" part. Most notably, he warns the Crusader Clans not to underestimate ComStar or Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht, and advises them to bid conservatively and prepare for a drawn-out campaign. But the Crusaders have no intention of listening to their Warden ilKhan, and Ulric knew it.
• Cassandra Truth: He was one of two Khans who saw Operation REVIVAL for what it was: A long-running grind against an entrenched enemy with enough territory to require massive logistical support and planning to accomplish. No-one outside of Clans Wolf and Star Adder (who weren't allowed to participate anyway) listened to him. He later attempted to warn the other Clans how the Battle of Tukayyid would be fought by ComStar, and none of them (outside the Falcon Guards and parts of Clan Ghost Bear) would listen to him then either. As seen above, Ulric more less counted on this happening.
• Character Tics: Has a habit of constantly stroking his goatee when in deep thought, or concocting a plan.
• Do Wrong, Right: Since he was basically forced to go along with the Clan Invasion, which he foresaw as a disastrous Crusader folly, he decided he was going to truly prepare Clan Wolf for it. As a result, Clan Wolf was by far the most successful Invader Clan, and only when elements in other Invader Clans adopted a strategic philosophy similar to his did they see true success. Other elements that stubbornly clung to Clan traditions of warfare found themselves strategically outmatched by their Inner Sphere opponents despite the individual superiority of their warriors and war machines.
• Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Or Clan and Grand Council as the case may be, and repeatedly. The political factions in the Clans are eternally hauling Ulric up to explain himself and trying to oust him from power, but he's as capable a political warrior as he is a MechWarrior.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Dies in one at the order of Vandervahn Chistu, the Jade Falcon saKhan. Notably, this was a complete violation of the Clan's honor code, which wound up biting Chistu hard later on, because he missed disposing of a witness...
• Pet the Dog: Ulric is by no means a bad person (in the Grey-on-Grey setting of Battletech he is actually quite upstanding), but going out of his way to ask ComStar's Precentor-Martial Focht to deliver a message to Morgan Kell informing him that his son (his former Bondsman and protégé) is not only alive but one of his most valued warriors is this.
• Reassignment Backfire: Being forced to take part in the invasion actually gives him the chance to stop it, even more so when he is promoted to ilKhan after Leo Showers got kamikazed. As ilKhan, he not only blunted the attempts to fill his now-vacant seat as Clan Wolf Khan with a Crusader, but also exploited certain inter-clan rivalries between the first-choice invader clans and the reinforcement clans to further hamper the invasion. He also "accidentally" let slip to ComStar that Terra was the invasion's ultimate goal, and then negotiated the proxy Battle of Tukayyid.
• The Rival: He had multiple. Khan Leo Showers was his political rival for decades before the Clan Invasion. After Showers' death, his main rival became Khan Elias Crichell of Clan Jade Falcon.
• The Strategist: Politically and militarily, Ulric was an expert. Under his Khanship, the Wolves essentially led the Clan Warden bloc. During the invasion, Ulric's understanding of what they were actually facing and what they would need to hold the ground they had taken meant the Wolves outpaced the other Clans while still taking fewer losses and facing less resistance on the planets they had conquered. There is a recurring trait in many of the Kerensky lineage of having a political and strategic far-sight that makes their actions in the current timeframe seem esoteric, called "Kerensky's Vision", and many consider Ulric to have it.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He hinders the Invading Clans by pairing them with Reservist-positioned clans that have rivalries with them. For instance, The Smoke Jaguars were paired with Nova Cats, and when they failed to take the Draconis Combine's capital they pinned the blame on each other. The Nova Cats would later decide to defect to the Second Star League in their annihilation of the Smoke Jaguars.
• Unishment: The vindicative crusader-dominated Grand Council decided to promote him to ilKhan after Leo Showers was killed in action, as further punishment for his daring to philosophically oppose the invasion. They were completely blind to the opportunity it gave him to maximize his efforts to strategically sabotage the invasion.
• Xanatos Gambit: Alongside his Batman Gambits, Ulric frequently maneuvers his opponents into positions where no matter what they do, Ulric, the Wolves, and the Wardens come out on top.
  • By out-Crusading the Crusaders (thanks to superior understanding of and planning for the tactical, strategic, logistical and political realities of the invasion), he gets the Wolves advancing faster and farther than anyone else, all while still being able to hold on to their newly claimed teritory. Either the other Clans overextend themselves and become open to defeat by Inner Sphere forces, or the Wolves win the race to Terra, become the ilClan, and can enforce their Warden philosophy on the rest of the Clans. Either way, Ulric wins.
  • The Battle of Tukayyid was a twofer. Either the other Clans listen to Ulric's advice about preparing to fight a real, ugly, brutal, no-holds-barred war instead of their ritualized Trials, in which case the Clans will likely realize exactly how unprepared they are for actual warfare, or they ignore him and ComStar curb-stomps them. Either way, Ulric wins. If the Clans win the battle, then Terra is ceded to their control, a major objective of the invasion is attained with relatively little bloodshed, and invasion more or less ends. If ComStar wins, there's a fifteen year truce, during which the Inner Sphere will narrow the technology gap between them and the Clans, and prepare to defend themselves effectively when the invasion begins anew. Either way, Ulric wins.
  • Even him being charged with conspiracy to commit genocide on the Clans via the truce is one for Ulric. Either he's allowed to remain in office and the truce stands, or the Crusaders oust him, he declares a Trial of Refusal on that and as many other decisions as possible, and throws the entirety of Clan Wolf into them to bleed the Crusaders both from his own Clan and whichever Clan brings the charges (the Jade Falcons, as it turned out), inflicting enough damage on the Crusader movement overall they'll need time to rebuild before renewing the invasion. Either way, Ulric wins.

Anastasia Kerensky

Anastasia Kerensky, circa 3130

Era(s): Dark Age, ilClan

One of the most prominent characters in the Dark Age. A Clanner born from Clan Wolf-in-Exile with ambitions to conquer Terra.

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• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She'll be fighting against one faction, only to join them in a later time. She's gotten better about this.
• Depending on the Author: Seems to be the reason for why she switched sides, 'Mechs, and motivations so often. She was one of the most promenant characters in the initial Dark Age novel line, but there was very little consistency between authors as to how to use her. This has more or less smoothed out with the ilClan era.
• Fiery Redhead: She is described as having red hair and green eyes.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: She has been a heroine and an enemy to the Republic in a short span of time. She aided the planet Archernar against the Steel Wolves only to join them later, then took control of the unit forming the Wolf Hunters. Seems to have finally settled on standing by Alaric Ward, having served as his champion against Malvina Hazen during the ilClan trial.
• Legacy Character: To her blood mother Natasha Kerensky.

Phelan Kell

Phelan Kell — Wolf — Ward — Kell

Era(s): Clan Invasion

Phelan Kell, also known as Phelan Wolf and Phelan Ward, is the Khan of Clan Wolf-in-Exile. Born the son of Morgan Kell, leader of the Kell Hounds mercenary group, Phelan was captured by Clan Wolf during the Clan Invasion. While in captivity, Phelan became the Bondsman of Khan Ulric Kerensky, who taught him all about Clan life.

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• Ace Custom: Before his capture by the Clans, he piloted a Wolfhound he called Grinner, after a family dog. Ulric had it rebuilt and upgraded with Clan technology, the only known one of its kind.
• Ace Pilot: To be expected from the son of the leader of the Kell Hounds, but he takes his rebuilt and upgraded 35-ton Wolfhound against Kai Allard-Liao's 50-ton Centurion Yen-Lo-Wang in a simulator battle and achieves a Mutual Kill, which is better than anyone else who's gone up against Kai one-on-one has done. He also runs the same 'Mech against the traitorous Clan officer Conal Ward in an eighty-ton Gargoyle (which would be regarded as suicide by most pilots) and wins. Natasha Kerensky confides in him that she had followed his training and was so impressed that she planned to offer him a lance command slot in the Black Widow Cluster when he came of age. Jaime Wolf ordered her not to, but being offered a spot in the most prestigious mercenary outfit in the Inner Sphere at eighteen is impressive.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: How else would a Freebirth Bondsman like Phelan be nominated Khan of Clan Wolf-in-Exile? Notably, Phelan did not do well in the Inner Sphere, being hotheaded and caring less about rules and regulations and more about what he thought needed to be done in a given moment. One would think this would make him a poor fit for the rigid, honor-bound Clan society, but the Clans (Clan Wolf in particular) view results as the most important thing, and Phelan gets results. His bending (and occasional breaking) of the Clans' rules of honorable combat occasionally gets him in trouble, but much less so than it did in the Inner Sphere, because his actions bring victory. Plus, Clan warriors have a rather simple reaction to disagreements - fight it out, and whoever wins is right. Phelan does so well with the Clan way of things that he scores a Bloodname at twenty-one, less than two years after being inducted as a warrior, and becomes saKhan of Clan Wolf almost immediately after that.
• Audience Surrogate: In the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, he serves as one for the Clans.
• Badass Family: The Kell family are this in their capacity as high-end mercenaries. Also of note are the sibko children born from his genetic material and any Wolf Clanners who take on the Kell Bloodname.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Unintentionally. Phelan takes command of the damage control team at the bridge of the Dire Wolf after it got rammed by a fighter because he was the only one willing to start barking orders at people. At the time, he was still technically a Bondsman.
• Child Soldiers: Downplayed. When he was captured by the Clans at age 18, he had already been trained and was serving with the Kell Hounds in a combat capacity.
• Contrived Coincidence: By blind luck, he happens to be serving in the Wolf Clan's planned invasion corridor and winds up captured by the one Clan that has a Bloodname that he's technically eligible for, by someone who is a credible rival for that Bloodname.
• Defector from Decadence: Toyed with. He's viewed as one by the Clans at first, being a freeborn bondsman from the Inner Sphere who joined the Wolf Clan and rose to the rank of saKhan before the Wolves splintered. Then it's downplayed with Clan Wolf-in-Exile, who are still Clanners, but Wardens rather than Crusaders and as such are interested in protecting the Inner Sphere rather than conquering it, so he's viewed as a bit of one by some of the Inner Sphere (the rest don't give a hoot that he's a Warden rather than a Crusader, they just hate him for going over to the Clanners). He doesn't hand over the navigation data to the Clan Homeworlds, because the Wolves don't have it anymore, but he gives all the information he can to the Second Star League and helps them plan out Operations BULLDOG and SERPENT, which wind up ending the Clan Invasion. Clan Wolf-in-Exile settles in Lyran space and helps hold back the other Clans and fights during the FedCom Civil War and the Jihad.
• The Exile: He is the Khan of a whole Clan of them.
• Going Native: Occurs during his captivity by Clan Wolf. As a Bondsman to the Clan, he became a strong believer in the Clan Warden political perspective. He was described as having taken to the Clan lifestyle like a convert to a new religion. However, he is a staunch Warden, dislikes the wanton destruction and cruelty many Clanners seem to relish during the invasion, and repeatedly points out his main goal is that if the invasion has to happen, he's going to do whatever he can to make sure it happens with as little bloodshed and damage to the Inner Sphere as possible.
• Heroic Lineage: As mentioned above, the Kells are a Badass Family, but the Ward bloodname he picks up is impressive - fifteen people held it before him, ten of which became Khans or saKhans.
• Meaningful Name: Phelan is Gaelic for Wolf.
• Meaningful Rename: In a full-circle kind of way, Phelan went from calling himself Phelan Kell, then he was given the name Phelan Wolf after he joined Clan Wolf. Then he earned the Ward Bloodname for himself, and thus he took on the name Phelan Ward (his mother's maiden name was Ward, which allows Phelan to compete for the Bloodname, being related to the originator of the Ward Bloodname on his mother's side). And then, after he became the Khan of Clan Wolf-in-Exile, Ulric used his power as ilKhan (posthumously) to create the Bloodname Kell and award it to Phelan, so he went back to being Phelan Kell.
• Old Soldier: There's a bit more leeway for Bloodnamed Clan warriors, especially Khans, but Phelan was roughly 77 years old when he died in the cockpit, leading three sibkos to intercept a Jade Falcon attack.
• One True Love: He has one in Ranna Kerensky, though there is no such thing as marriage in Clan society. Instead, Phelan withheld his genetic legacy from the Clan's Super Breeding Program until Ranna earned her Bloodname, so that they would achieve 'immortality' together by creating a sibko from their genetics. Her feelings for him were so strong that after meeting the Kell Hounds, she said that if he ever returned to them, she would go with him.
• Poor Communication Kills: What was from his paramour Ranna's perspective creating a point of comparison to their dalliances so she could get a grip on her feelings for Phelan looked like a romantic betrayal when Phelan learns that Ranna had a tryst with his tormentor and later rival, Vlad. Clan culture has largely dispensed with the concept of romantic love, and has a more Free-Love Future when it comes to sexual liaisons. Phelan was despondent over the perceived betrayal and wasn't talking, and Ulric Kerensky's little project in acclimating Phelan to Clan culture was in jeopardy of being derailed, so Ulric requested the visiting ComStar Precentor-Martial Anastasius Focht help him sort out the whole fiasco.
• Raised by Clanners: An interesting variation, in that Phelan spent a portion of his early life living with members of Wolf's Dragoons in a sibko-like environment. It likely led to the ease in which Phelan went native and joined Clan Wolf outright during his capture. And it's subtly implied Phelan may not actually be freeborn, as a mention is made early in the first book of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy that Morgan Kell and his wife Salome are coming to Outreach, the homeworld of Wolf's Dragoons, in part because they have a fertility problem that Jaime Wolf has offered to help them with. Wolf's Dragoons being from Clan Wolf, they have access to the same technology used in the breeding program...
• Repetitive Name: A Classic Kurashikku variation. For a time he was known as 'Phelan Wolf,' so until he took on his first Bloodname his name directly translated to Wolf Wolf.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: The Kell Hounds believed him killed in action by the Clans early on. Instead, he's captured, interrogated, and made a bondsman. He later befriends Anastasius Focht, who passes a cryptic message to his father that name-drops the trope to tell Morgan Kell that his son isn't as dead as he thinks.
• Restricted Rescue Operation: Phelan was a student at the Nagelring (the finest military academy in the Lyran Commonwealth) in his youth, but heard about a school bus being caught in an avalanche during a blizzard. He took a 'Mech without permission, located the bus, and used the fusion reactor's waste heat to keep them warm, but only managed to bring basic medical supplies and some of the more seriously injured died regardless. Phelan was expelled for insisting he'd done nothing wrong.
• The Rival: Vlad (later Vlad Ward, Khan of the Crusader Wolves in an ongoing bit of symmetry) was his main rival for the Ward Bloodname and the man who captured Phelan in the first place.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Tyra Miraborg. They had a brief and intense romance when the Kell Hounds were on Gunzburg, but she turned down his offer to join the Hounds and he never expected to see her again. He didn't, but her Heroic Sacrifice nearly got him killed.
• Taking the Heat: Early in their time as bondsmen, some of the people captured alongside Phelan used an electronic lockpick he had built to break into the warrior quarters - unfortunately walking in on Vlad and Ranna having a romp. When Vlad storms in with a neural whip demanding to know who walked in on him, Phelan claims sole responsibility and won't spill who actually did it even as Vlad beats seven shades of hell out of him. Notably, it doesn't win him any points with anyone, except Ranna, who he didn't particularly care about impressing at the time.
• To Win Without Fighting: Phelan becomes nigh-legendary among the Clans for capturing the planet of Gunzburg. Alone. Without a 'Mech. Specifically, he talked to the defending commander (whom he knew personally but concealed his own identity from with a Wolf mask) and convinced him that while the defenders might be able to put up a fight, they would ultimately lose even a battle of attrition, and that his people would suffer. This realization touches the defending commander, who turns over the world peacefully for the sake of not bringing war to his people. Phelan then convinces the commander not to retire, because his people will need a familiar and trusted leader then more than ever.
• Tranquil Fury: When he, his father Morgan, and Katherine Steiner-Davion meet on Tharkad, Katherine less-than-subtly threatens Morgan after he reveals that he knows Katherine had her mother murdered (with Salome Ward-Kell, Morgan's wife and Phelan's mother, as a collateral casualty). Phelan immediately and very calmly begins strangling her (complete with Neck Lift) and only lets her go when Morgan orders him to stop, and then proceeds to very calmly explain that if anything happens to his father, Phelan and his Wolves will destroy her.
  Phelan: Understand this: if he dies, you die. If I die, you die.
• What You Are in the Dark: Among the scant few rescues he was able to make in the ruined bridge of the warship Dire Wolf was Vlad, his tormentor. He could have easily left him there and claimed no more bodies could be found, as the HarJel seal holding shut the massive breach was about to give out and space the compartment again. Whenever Vlad tries to flaunt the fancy gun belt he claimed off of Phelan when originally captured, Phelan just subtly reminds Vlad of the scar across his face that he got as a reminder of the rescue.

Vlad Ward

Vlad Ward, Khan of Crusader Clan Wolf

Era(s): Clan Invasion

Vladimir of House Ward is a staunch Crusader, and a rival of Phelan Kell. Despite the bitter feud between them, the two would end up shaping each other into the leaders they both became.

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• Always Someone Better: Vlad's victory/defeat rate against Phelan when things became violent between them is... not good for Vlad. He only ever seems to win (or get anywhere close to it) if he has a decided advantage. Their very first engagement was in 'Mechs, and Vlad had over twice the 'Mech mass, the element of surprise, and a marked technological advantage in his favor. The second round was when Phelan was weak and dazed from chemically-aided interrogation. A third instance was during Phelan's Trial of Position, where Phelan was already battered by defeating two before Vlad as his final opponent. Vlad failed anyway, because it was also Natasha Kerensky's re-entry Trial, and she hosed Vlad for her fourth kill, saving Phelan in the process. On the converse side, Phelan thrashed him (and also an intervening Elemental for good measure) on Rasalhague after conquering the planet for beating a destitute civilian. And Phelan ultimately won against Vlad as his final opponent to win the Ward bloodname. Vlad gets a bit of a complex towards Phelan over it, but eventually he grows out of it.
• Battle Trophy: Claims Phelan's gunbelt (a gift from Tyra Miraborg) as a trophy after he captures him. Phelan takes it back after their final fight on Tukayyid.
• Blood on the Debate Floor: He beats ilKhan Crichell to death in the Grand Council Hall.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Technically, but it's complicated. He and Ranna are sibkin, though in their case they aren't genetical siblings (Vlad is of the Ward bloodline, while Ranna is a Kerensky). They hooked up at least a few times, including at one point where Ranna was deeply confused over her burgeoning romantic feelings for Phelan.^note However, their case is very much downplayed thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness: Blood of Kerensky has Vlad (House Ward), Ranna (House Kerensky), Carew (an AeroPilot), and Evantha Fetladral (an Elemental, House Fetladral) all of the same sibko. This is impossible. Sibkos (Sibling Companies) are lots of 100 bred from the same genetic pairing; all would be of the same Bloodhouse (since they all have the same "mother") and all would be of the same phenotype (since breeding an Elemental to an AeroPilot would be pointless).
• The Determinator: Say what you will about Vlad, but his absolute refusal to give up or stop is one of his most admirable qualities. With his 'Mech buried under rubble from the attack that killed Ulric Kerensky, Vlad sets his own broken arm and waits for rescue, fortifying his cockpit (with a broken arm!) in case those rescuers are Jade Falcons and hostile. Soon as he is able, Vlad challenges Vandervahn Chistu to a Trial of Grievance over Ulric's death, killing him (mind you, he was piloting a 'Mech while he had a broken arm to do so). When Elias Crichell is nominated ilKhan shortly after, Vlad challenges him to a Trial of Grievance, stating that Crichell lacks the warrior credentials to be Khan, let alone ilKhan. It is randomly determined they will fight Unaugmented, then Crichell points out the Trial cannot commence here and now, as Vlad has a weapon attached to his arm (his cast). Vlad shatters the cast on a table edge before beating Crichell to death in the middle of a Grand Council session.
• Embarrassing Rescue: After Tyra Miraborg rams the bridge of the Dire Wolf, Phelan rescues Ulric Kerensky, who is very grateful, and Vlad, who wants his head on a stick. It's only compounded when Phelan finds out later that Vlad is the expected winner for the Bloodname Phelan's eligible for.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite him being just as ardently Crusader as Jade Falcon khans Elias Crichell and Van Chistu (if not moreso), he has nothing but contempt for them due to their cravenness, conniving schemes, and lack of any personal standards as warriors, which they're supposed to have by nature of their position. To that end, he kills them both, making a particular demonstration of how much of a Desk Jockey Crichell had become in front of all the other Clans' Khans.
• Friendly Rivalry: The Wolves and the Jade Falcons are not friends on a good day, but that doesn't stop him from working with Marthe Pryde to keep their Clans strong after the Refusal War, which gutted the forces of both Clans. The "friendly" part involved them hooking up at least once.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He got the scar on his face being rescued, ironically, by Phelan, after the kamikaze run on the warship Dire Wolf (see Tyra Miraborg in the Inner Sphere characters).
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Vlad has some temper control issues. Even before the reader is formally introduced to the character and he's just another voice hidden behind a one-way glass and a voice morpher during Phelan's interrogation, Phelan could tell the difference in temper between two interrogators (the other being Ulric Kerensky).
• Last of His Kind: For a while, he was effectively the only Clan Wolf warrior left, after the immediate aftermath of the War of Refusal saw the Jade Falcon leadership try some political shenanigans to absorb Clan Wolf. He quickly rectified it... by killing both the Jade Falcon khans in lawful Trials against them and claiming Khanship of the reborn Clan Wolf for himself.
• Loophole Abuse: While his Crusader Wolves did fight in the Great Refusal and drew with the Inner Sphere forces, he points out that he abstained from the vote and as such was not bound by the Trial of Refusal that had just been decided against the Clan Invasion. However, he did promise to abide by the Truce of Tukayyid until it expired. Then he threatened war if Katherine Steiner-Davion wasn't handed over to him - he never promised peace if they met his terms.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Vlad may have starkly disagreed with Ulric Kerensky's Warden politics, but the man was still Vlad's Khan. He would not stand idly by and let the treachery that Jade Falcon saKhan Chistu perpetrated to kill Ulric go unanswered.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: He gets the appellation "Vlad Khanslayer" by Marthe Pryde for ensuring that the Jade Falcon top leadership that oversaw the War of Refusal also did not survive like their Wolf counterparts didn't; not for any disagreement in Clan politics (Vlad was as Crusader as they were if not more so), but because he saw them as despicable and dishonorable in their actions.
• The Native Rival: Effectively acts as this to Phelan, as shown in The Rival below, as a Trueborn Clan warrior that competes with the Spheroid Phelan for the Ward bloodname, cheats, but ultimately loses.
• The Rival: To Phelan. He looks down on Phelan as a lowly freeborn, and detests him as he is eligible for the same bloodname rights as he is.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Upon digging himself out of the rubble left by the attack that killed Ulric Kerensky, Vlad finds that the surviving Wolves have been Absorbed into Clan Jade Falcon. Coupled with the dishonorable Macross Missile Massacre that killed Ulric, Vlad decides he's not going to let this stand, and challenges Vandervahn Chistu to Trial of Grievance over the matter. Despite piloting with a broken arm, Vlad wins, killing Chistu. In recognition, Elias Crichell undoes the Absorption, consigning all Clan Wolf personnel in Clan Jade Falcon to Clan Jade Wolf. Incensed by this (Vlad wanted Clan Wolf back, not Clan Jade Wolf), Vlad becomes Khan of Clan Jade Wolf, challenges Crichell to Trial of Grievance immediately after the latter is elected ilKhan, beats Crichell to death with his bare hands, then uses his power as Khan to re-create Clan Wolf.
• Sadistic Choice: Managed to catch the Jade Falcons in one in collusion with Katrina Steiner, after their little green warrior tooth-cutting spree through the Lyran Alliance's Clan front hit a snag from heavier resistance on Coventry. He attacks the Jade Falcons's undefended rear while the Clan rules of engagement disallowed them to withdraw from Coventry. It was thwarted by a response coalition led by Victor Davion-Steiner who did a bit of Loophole Abuse of Clan rules of engagement for both Coventry's and the Falcons' benefit: offer Hegira, or granting an honorable withdrawal from the battlefield to a defeated foe.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Looks like a more angry Phelan with a scar on his face. Apparently three hundred years separation between their branches of the Ward bloodline is not a problem for this trope.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: With the rivalry between Vlad and Phelan early in their careers and featuring heavily in Michael Stackpole's novels, one would anticipate a climactic showdown ending in one or both's death. Instead life takes them in different directions so they never again face each other on a battlefield, and Vlad is killed many years later in a skirmish with Clan Hell's Horses.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has one on Tukayyid after he loses the Ward Bloodname to Phelan. He gets blown out of his 'Mech, then taunts Phelan (who comes down to fistfight him) into dropping his gun. Then he promptly goes for the gun and tries to shoot Phelan. Except Phelan gave his ammo to an Elemental comrade of theirs and was wearing the gun out of habit. He tries to club Phelan with the empty gun, and Phelan drops him with one punch.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: After being named Khan of the newly reborn Crusader Wolves, he falls for Katherine Steiner-Davion after capturing her while she was on an expedition to fish for potential Clan allies against a Jade Falcon onslaught. His immediate perception of her apprehensive posture after capture isn't so much "prey caught by predator", but "predator caught in another predator's territory". And it intrigues him. Interestingly, his sibkin Ranna had, years earlier, spoken to him about having similar feelings for Phelan. Upon meeting Katherine, Vlad decides he finally has some clue what the hell Ranna was talking about.
• With My Hands Tied: When Vlad made his challenge against ilKhan Crichell's credentials as a warrior, and the Trial of Grievance was determined by chance to be hand-to-hand, Crichell tried to worm his way out of it by claiming Vlad's arm cast gave him an unfair advantage as it could be used as a bludgeon. Vlad's response was to smash his still-mending arm against a table, shattering the cast in a show of fortitude. Despite the voluntary handicap, Vlad was still younger and better conditioned for battle (whereas Crichell was... not), so the Trial still ended with Vlad fatally stomping Crichell's neck.

Alaric Ward

The ilKhan

Alaric Ward is the genetic offspring of Vlad Ward, Katherine Steiner-Davion, and Victor Steiner-Davion. Katherine had him specially commissioned using the DNA of all three of them to be her vengeance on the Inner Sphere for not rolling over to her every whim. Alaric ultimately decided he'd be better off taking his destiny into his own hands, and given the results, it's hard to say he was wrong.

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• Brother–Sister Incest: Technically? Katherine used her and her brother Victor's DNA to create Alaric, though this was done entirely with the Clans' Iron Womb technology.
• The Conqueror: Alaric's rise to power sees him batter down the supposedly impenetrable walls of the Fortress Republic and fall upon Terra like a hammer. With his victory, he not only demolishes the Republic of the Sphere, but achieves the long-cherished dream of the Clans a century after they lost at the Battle of Tukayyid, paving the way for a new Star League.
• Extra Parent Conception: Thanks to Clanner Iron Womb tech, Alaric contains DNA from both Katherine and Victor Steiner-Davion and Vlad Ward.
• Expy: He fits the same general role of Roboute Guilliman in recent Warhammer 40,000. He is the leader of the most successful Clan of the twenty originals before ascending to the highest office in the known galaxy in the spirit of ideals set forward by an ancient and deeply revered founder, now facing the unenviable task of building and maintaining a new order in the face of years of bad blood between the major powers of the known galaxy and reversing the general decline of everything.
• Kick the Dog: He recruited the Wolf's Dragoons mercenaries to help with the conquest of Terra (specifically, to help fight Malvina Hazen) with the promise of letting them join Clan Wolf. However, he deliberately gave them bad orders that caused the Dragoons to suffer heavy casualties, and after the war was over all he gave them was a bag of thirty pieces of silver and told them to get off his planet.
• Klingon Promotion: A Lyran assassin tried to kill him with a poisoned knife when Alaric was being dressed down by the Wolf Khan Seth Ward. Alaric killed the assassin, but then used the knife on Seth Ward and claimed the assassin had done it.
• Only Sane Man: Alaric Ward is many things, but above all else he is deeply rational and pragmatic, and willing to defy convention to play the situation to his advantage and achieve his goals.
• The Redeemer: Tries to play this for Malvina Hazen. Whatever else she is, she's a charismatic leader, fantastic combatant, tactical and strategic thinker to rival Alaric himself. If she can give up her sociopathic narcissism, she'll be exactly the kind of person Alaric needs to help him build a true Second Star League. Finally, he realizes that she is, truly, Beyond Redemption.
• Royal Bastard: Alaric reveals during a broadcast that he has a technical claim to the throne of the Lyran Commonwealth through his mother Katherine after becoming Khan of the Wolf Empire.
• Self-Made Orphan: Alaric figured out fairly quickly that Katherine was beyond help. So he put her out of everyone's misery the old-fashioned way.
• Taught by Experience: Alaric studied well the Battle of Tukayyid, learning precisely the mistakes the Clans made that cost them that battle, and the good calls Clan Wolf made that allowed them eke out a victory. When it comes time to take Terra and see Clan Wolf become the ilClan, Alaric not only assiduously avoids the same mistakes, he makes sure Malvina Hazen and her Jade Falcons are on hand to make precisely those mistakes. By the time the ilClan Trial comes, the Falcons have spent so much in terms of troops and materiel that one half-successful strike against a Falcon supply depot means that for the third and final day of the Trial, most Falcon 'Mechs are running with half ammunition loads, greatly swinging the battle in favor of the Wolves.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Possesses the oratory and manipulative skill of Katherine, the clarity of purpose and insane ego of Vlad, and the daring cunning and lethal skill of Victor. He comes to realize that he can use all those traits, in turn or in concert, as the situation demands, making him a terribly effective leader and perhaps the most dangerous man in the Inner Sphere.

Clan Jade Falcon

In General

The Emblem of Clan Jade Falcon

We are Jade Falcon, great among the Clans. We are warriors who fight with the strength of the falcon's claws and ascend to the heavens on wings of the same. We remember with the clarity of falcon sight the words of Kerensky. Through the smoke of time he speaks to us, his chosen, and urges us onwards with the promise of Eden. We will retake what is ours by right: that shining jewel, Terra. Not the vastness of space, nor the Wolves' obstinate howl, will stay us from our righteous goal. We are Crusaders and will trample all who stand in our way."

One of the original twenty Clans as envisioned by Nicholas Kerensky, Clan Jade Falcon was the pre-eminent Crusader Clan for most of the Clans' lifespan. Staunch traditionalists who unyieldingly keep to the Honour Road, the loss of the Kerensky bloodname to Clan Wolf was a grudge the Falcons still nurse to this day.

The Falcons were one of the greatest backers of the Clan Invasion and one of the four original invading Clans, holding the dubious 'honour' of being the first Clan to be soundly defeated by an Inner Sphere army at the hands of Kai-Allard Liao. Following the disastrous Battle of Tukayyid, the Falcons were severely blooded in the Refusal War and were stopped from continuing their conquest of the Inner Sphere, remaining within the worlds they carved from the Lyrans.

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• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The Falcons' greatest strength is the fact that their Merchant Caste revolutionized the Clans' banking system: Most of the inter-Clan economy and the pricing of goods is backed by Falcon merchants. After the Blackout reduced the C-Bill to worthlessness, the Falcons created several VaultShips, heavily-guarded DropShips designed to carry gold, precious metals, and other assets, and to keep the Kerensky registries updated, preventing the collapse of the Clan currency.
• Honor Before Reason: One of the most hide-bound traditionalists of the Clans, who scrupulously held to zellbrigen. Only the Falcon Guards beginning to use Inner Sphere tactics after Twycross saved the Clan at Tukayyid.
• National Weapon: The Summoner, Hellbringer and Kit Fox are signature Jade Falcon 'Mechs, with the later Jade Hawk, Gyrfalcon and Eyrie serving as a totem 'Mechs.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Falcons zealously maintain the Clans' Fantastic Caste System, but this also means zealously maintaining those parts of the Remembrance that mentions how non-Warriors deserve gratitude and respect. As a consequence, Falcon civilians (and their Inner Sphere subjects) enjoy a high standard of living even if they're given no political power.
• The Purge: In what would be an Establishing Character Moment for the Clan, one of the first actions of Jade Falcon post-Klondike was to purge its own warriors of anyone who dared question ilKhan Kerensky for giving Clan Wolf his Bloodname. They would go on to repeat this process against civilians chafing against the caste system, giving the Falcons a reputation for Honor Before Reason.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Won the Refusal War but lost a ton of materiel and warriors in the process. The Jade Falcons attempted to Absorb what was left of the Wolves afterwards, only to have it backfire due to Vlad Ward (and the dishonorable actions of their own Khans).
• The Rival: The pre-eminent rival of Clan Wolf, and also enemies of Clan Steel Viper. Ulric Kerensky gave Steel Viper a support role in the Falcon Invasion corridor, to the Falcons' dismay.

Aidan Pryde

The Jade Phoenix

Era(s): Clan Invasion

A Trueborn MechWarrior of Clan Jade Falcon, Aidan is best known for his unconventional - and extremely controversial - path to becoming a Bloodnamed warrior. Born into the same sibko as future Jade Falcon Khan Marthe Pryde, Aidan would fail in his Trial of Position, only to be offered a second chance by a sympathetic instructor - one that involved posing as a Freeborn.

After succeeding in his second Trial, Aidan, now known as Jorge, would go on to the sorts of menial assignments and postings typically given to even the best Freeborn MechWarriors. There his career would have stalled, but the allure of a Bloodname was too great. Despite warnings to never reveal his true identity, when a Trial of Bloodright for the Pryde name was announced, he cast aside his Freeborn persona, in so doing incurring the ire of the vast majority of Jade Falcon Warriors. While nominally vindicated by a Trial of Refusal and subsequently earning the Pryde Bloodname, he was still shunned by much of his warrior brethren. It would take the Battle of Tukayyid for their opinions to change.

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• Brother–Sister Incest: Complicated. He and Marthe are sibkin, essentially siblings since the same genetic material was used to "father" and "mother" them in the Iron Wombs. Because of the breeding program and so on, the Clans have no stigma against sibkin as they come of age exploring their new urges with each other. Aidan and Marthe were noted to be particularly close in this regard, though as the final stages of their warrior training commence, she starts distancing herself from Aidan. Also, the mother of Aidan's child, Peri, is another of his sibkin, which actually stands their daughter Diana in good stead: being Freeborn of two Trueborn of the same sibko (though Peri washed out into the Scientist caste), she's almost Trueborn herself.
• Colonel Badass: Is a Star Colonel at the Battle of Tukayyid.
• Cultural Rebel: Was never fully on-board with the indoctrination-style schooling he got in the sibko. He wanted to ask questions, quench his curiosity about why things played out the way they did, why Nicholas' Clans are indeed the perfect society, why the Inner Sphere barbarians are wrong about everything. The cache of old books he found (see Cultured Warrior) went a long way to quenching this thirst, but also set him apart from other Clan warriors and officers (even more than his unusual circumstances already did). While he never outright rejected or rebelled against the way of the Clans, he did a lot of challenging of it in the privacy of his own thoughts.
• Cultured Warrior: Is known to have practiced falconry (common among Jade Falcon Trueborn), and to have kept and read a large collection of Terran books (decidedly uncommon among any of the Clans).
• Dead Person Impersonation: Pretends to be the Freeborn MechWarrior candidate Jorge after Ter Roshak arranges for the real Jorge to be killed in a training accident, along with the rest of his unit.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Continued to be posted to menial assignments, even after earning a Bloodname.
• Duel to the Death: Aidan's Trial of Bloodright. While not a requirement of the Trial, all of the other participants swear an oath to kill him if they end up facing him. None succeed, though his final opponent comes close.
• Due to the Dead: After his heroic sacrifice during the Battle of Tukayyid, the Jade Falcons honor him with a passage in The Remembrance and by fast tracking his genetic material into their breeding program. The Com Guard units he fought during his last stand also leave his Timber Wolf undisturbed where it fell out of respect for his valor.
• Explosive Decompression: The final duel in his Trial of Bloodright ends in this for Aidan's opponent, thanks to a lucky autocannon shot.
• Fantastic Racism: Was on the receiving end of the typical Clan prejudice against Freeborns while posing as one. He also noted how much more extensive training was for Trueborn versus Freeborn cadets, having experienced both.
• Generation Xerox: Ter Roshak notes several times how much Aidan reminds him of Ramon Mattlov, the male geneparent of Aidan's sibko and Roshak's former comrade. The resemblance even plays a role in Roshak's decision to offer Aidan a second chance - at their trial, he states that he believed Aidan might even be Ramon Mattlov, reincarnated.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Dies holding off a Com Guard assault so that the rest of the Falcon Guard, including his daughter, can retreat to their DropShips.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Horse, the Freeborn MechWarrior he befriended as Jorge and with whom he would continue to share assignments even after becoming Aidan Pryde.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Initiates a general melee during his first Trial of Position, hoping to score two kills - and be automatically promoted to Star Commander - in the confusion. His sibkin Marthe takes advantage first by shooting him, earning the same promotion for herself while causing him to fail the Trial.
• Honor Before Reason: By the Clans' concept of honor, at least. Aidan abandons a guaranteed, if unspectacular career as a Freeborn MechWarrior for even the slimmest chance at being permitted to compete for a Bloodname. Later, during the final matchup of his Trial of Bloodright, his opponent foregoes a chance to claim victory when Aidan's 'Mech is effectively knocked out, just to fulfill the oath he swore to kill Aidan. A lucky shot costs him the match... and his own life.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Learns Diana, a young MechWarrior under his command, is his daughter just prior to his death.
• Meaningful Name: Pryde is an apt surname for someone whose ambition sometimes got the better of him.
• Meaningful Rename: Averted with his winning a Bloodname, which does not earn him the level of respect it usually would in Clan society. Played straight with the Falcon Guard, who earn the nickname "Pryde's Pride" under his command - a sign that they are no longer a disgraced unit.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: A hallmark of Aidan's, though it sometimes backfires on him:
  • Initiates a general melee during his first Trial of Position.
  • Uses cooperative tactics with Horse during his second Trial of Position.
  • Plans an ambush against Clan Wolf while stationed on Glory.
  • Uses Joanna's crippled 'Mech as a makeshift bomb during his Trial of Refusal.
  • Uses a number of 'Mechs to form a makeshift dam/bridge during the Battle of Tukayyid.
• Papa Wolf: A most un-Clanlike trait of his that surprised even himself; during the retreat from Tukayyid the Falcon Guard were bringing up the rear when the young Freeborn warrior Diana has her 'Mech crippled, preventing her from escaping. Aidan initially can only wish her an honourable death, which she is resigned to, until Joanna suddenly tells him that Diana is his daughter, born from his affair with Peri (infuriating Diana, who'd sworn Joanna to silence about it). Aidan contacts an Elemental called Selima, orders him to rescue Diana from her cockpit and turns back to cover them, fighting to the death against the Com Guard to let his daughter live.
• The Phoenix: Metaphorically. The trilogy in which he stars is titled "Legend of the Jade Phoenix," representing the "death" of his warrior dreams, his "rebirth" as a Freeborn warrior, another "death" as he reveals his true identity and faces being executed for it, another "rebirth" as he wins his Bloodname, and finally his true rebirth as a respected and admired Jade Falcon Trueborn Warrior coinciding with his physical death at the battle of Tukayyid. Some Jade Falcons who particularly idolize Aidan and his story refer to him as "the Jade Phoenix." The Clan would eventually create a new assault 'Mech named after him, which according to legend contains a milligram of the armour plating from the Timber Wolf he was piloting when he died in every unit.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Falcon Guard, a disgraced and decimated unit that Aidan is assigned to rebuild, is replenished largely with Freeborns and other equally undesirable warriors.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Is relegated to the Technician caste after failing his first Trial of Position. He lasts a month before going AWOL. His assignment to the obliterated Falcon Guards is also this: the unit is a storied one in the Jade Falcon touman, so they can't just retire it, but the disgrace of their defeat by Kai Allard-Liao is so great no one expects the Falcon Guards to ever accomplish anything noteworthy ever again. On paper, assigning Aidan Pryde is recognition of his honor and service as a Bloodnamed Trueborn warrior. In practice, it's handing him the absolute dregs of the Clan warrior caste in terms of both personnel and equipment and practically daring him to make something of it. He does.
• Someone to Remember Him By: A non-fatal example. Sires a child with his sibkin, Peri, while on the run. Though both survive to see their daughter reach adulthood, Aidan and Peri never see each other again.
• Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: Aidan and Joanna manage to train the disgraced Falcon Guard back to elite status just in time for the Battle of Tukayyid.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Not really romance, but Joanna favors calling Aidan to her quarters for "coupling" frequently while she's his falconer (read "drill instructor.") This isn't exactly encouraged among the Clans, but isn't frowned upon to the point where Joanna faces discipinary action for it.
• Too Clever by Half: His penchant for unorthodox tactics sometimes backfires, most notably during his first Trial of Position, when Marthe takes advantage of the chaos he created to score a kill... against him.
• True Companions: His former sibkin Marthe Pryde is among the few to support him (albeit secretly) on his path to redemption, advising him during his Trial of Bloodright, and volunteering her unit to fight alongside his on Tukayyid. Horse and Joanna as well, though Joanna would sooner die than admit it. Diana as well, during the brief time she and her father worked together.
• You Shall Not Pass!: At Tukayyid, he holds the line alone against the Com Guards so the rest of the Falcon Guards can get off-planet. He had Kael Pershaw feeding him telemetry from a scout plane, but his was the only 'Mech on the field. He accounted for over a company of Com Guard 'Mechs before he finally went down.

Marthe Pryde

Marthe Pryde

Era(s): Clan Invasion, Jihad

Marthe Pryde was sibkin to Aidan Pryde and later the Khan of the Jade Falcons following the Refusal War. She would maneuver the Clan deftly through the Harvest Trials and eventually move it wholesale to its holdings in the Inner Sphere to escape the Wars of Reaving, all while repeatedly attempting to re-start hostilities with the Inner Sphere.

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• Aloof Ally: Serves as one to Aidan during his attempts to re-enter the warrior caste.
• Always Someone Better: To Aidan, being always more successful at fitting in and advancing as a warrior. Somewhat subverted later, when Aidan goes to achieve near mythical status among the Jade Falcons while Marthe is "just" another Jade Falcon Khan.
• Batman Gambit: Her push to Coventry in the Lyran Alliance after the Refusal War. She needs to show the other Clans that Jade Falcon is too strong to be a target of a Trial of Absorption, while using real combat to test and train fledgling warriors. Coventry lies just above the Tukayyid Truce Line and only four jumps from the Lyran capitol of Tharkad, so the world must be reinforced, and those reinforcements must the best Katherine Steiner-Davion can muster. Thus, these green Jade Falcon warriors cut their teeth on some of the best troops the Inner Sphere has to offer, rapidly returning the Clan's gutted forces to formidable strength.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Complicated. She and Aidan are of the same sibko, so have the same genetic parents, but the Clans see it as perfectly natural for sibkin to explore with each other as they mature. Aidan and Marthe were noted to be particularly close, though she starts distancing herself from him as their training progresses.
• First-Name Basis: Marthe has addressed her second-in-command, saKhan Samantha Clees, as "Sam" in formal communications. This is very unusual among Clan warriors, which might hint at how close they are.
• HA HA HA—No: Marthe's response to being given an ultimatum by The Society was, reputedly, laughing uncontrollably for several minutes and then executing the nearest scientist she could find by way of an answer.
• The Purge: Leads her Clan in purging most of its scientist caste to root out The Society. Pryde would later launch Trials of Possession against both the Hell's Horses and the Inner Sphere to replenish the Jade Falcons' scientists, which was a highly unusual move.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: serves in this role for the her Clan and the Crusader faction as a whole, being pragmatic, calculating and very reasonable. She advanced the use of Freeborn warriors such as Horse in the Jade Falcon Touman and stating that she would use every resource at her disposal, makes extensive use of Kael Pershaw's very competent Jade Falcon Watch and even allows Dianna, Aidan Pryde's freeborn daughter with his sibkin Peri, to compete for a bloodname since she is nearly trueborn herself.
• Sibling Rivalry: As typical with Clan sibkos, she competed with all her siblings to earn entry to the warrior caste and eventually cost Aidan his own position during their mutual Trial of Position. The two eventually bury the hatchet for good after she helps sponsor him for the Pryde bloodname.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Her solution for Clan Jade Falcon having lost most of its veteran warriors during the Refusal War was to immediately promote a bunch of untrained cadets and start a small-scale war with the FedComs, hoping that actual warfare would serve as training. Enough survived for it to work out.
• Worthy Opponent: She viewed Vlad Ward and the Crusader Wolves as such, cooperating with them on several occasions post-Refusal and holding no bad blood over his killings of Crichell and Chistu. Admittedly she was very wary of him even being alive, let alone made a Khan after the Refusal War. Both of them being staunch Crusaders helped, as well as the fact that Vlad killing both Jade Falcon Khans in quick succession paved the way for Marthe's own ascension to that rank.

Elias Crichell

Elias Crichell, shortest-lived ilKhan ever.

Era(s): Clan Invasion

Elias Crichell was Khan of the Jade Falcons during the Clan Invasion and very briefly ilKhan.

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• Desk Jockey: Elias Crichell is more politician than warrior in the time of the War of Refusal between Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon. Vlad uses this as compelling reason (with details like how his techs have logged more hours in his 'Mech than he has, there is conveniently no footage of his Trial of Position to test out as a warrior, and the 'Mechs he faced only needed their ejection seats replaced) to call a Trial of Grievance directly towards Crichell's credentials instead of a Trial of Refusal against the vote he just won to be named ilKhan. Since it was directly against Crichell and not against the Vote, Elias had to answer himself instead of having to call for someone to fight by proxy. And Vlad demonstrates in detail how unfit for even personal combat Crichell is... by killing Crichell in the Trial with his bare hands despite a mending arm.
• Finishing Stomp: Vlad's death blow upon him during their Trial of Grievance in a Grand Council session was Vlad's foot coming down hard on Elias's neck.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As incensed as he is by it, Vlad immediately latches on to Crichell's reasoning for creating Clan Jade Wolf. They would not be subject to the Abjuration recently passed against Clan Wolf (In-Exile) or the guilty verdict passed on Ulric that was the cause of the Refusal War, since they are not Clan Wolf, but Clan Jade Wolf. Vlad still decides to kill him for it, though.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • When Vlad turned up alive and declared a Trial of Grievance against Vandervahn Chistu, Crichell saw the opportunity to eliminate a threat to his position. Too bad for him, Vlad was just getting started...
  • Turned the entire Refusal War into one by semi-legally Absorbing the remaining Wolves to make up for the horrendous losses the Jade Falcons had suffered.
• Moving the Goalposts: Declared that the Wolves losing the Trial of Refusal that was the entire Refusal War constituted a Trial of Absorption (as Ulric had bid the entirety of the Wolves forces), and claimed the remaining Wolves for the Falcons as isorla. When Vlad proved that Chistu had violated zellbrigen in the final battle and won a Trial of Refusal against the Absorption, Crichell reversed the Absorption, but created the new Clan Jade Wolf instead.
• Never My Fault: Developed a reputation for blaming his saKhan for any setbacks.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Vlad beat him to death with his bare hands - literally bare, as he'd just smashed the cast off of his broken arm to prove he was fit to fight. In the middle of a Grand Council session. It culminates in Vlad snapping Crichell's neck under his boot.
• Short-Lived Leadership: He set a record for the shortest term as ilKhan - mere minutes from his election to his death, as Vlad immediately challenged him to a Trial of Grievance on the basis of him not being a warrior anymore and beat him to death when it was determined they would fight unaugmented.
• Smug Snake: He is utterly convinced that he's manipulating everyone and everything regarding the Refusal War and the aftermath perfectly, right up until Vlad beats him to death. His last saKhan Marthe Pryde tries to warn him that leaving Vlad alive (let alone giving Vlad his Clan back) is a horrible idea for multiple reasons, least of which is it weakens the already-mauled Falcon forces further.

Vandervahn Chistu

Vahn Chistu to his friends. If he had any.

Era(s): Clan Invasion

A Trueborn MechWarrior of Clan Jade Falcon, Chistu rose to the position of saKhan of Jade Falcon after the post's previous occupant was removed in disgrace. The Jade Falcon Khan Elias Crichell let Chistu run most of the operational details, knowing he could take credit for success and let the blame for failure rest on Chistu's shoulders.

Chistu played a large part in Ulric Kerensky's trial, leading directly to the Refusal War between the Wolves and the Falcons. He handled most of the planning, including Ulric's death on Wotan. He was later killed by Vlad Ward in single combat, after unknowingly failing to eliminate the latter in the dishonorable (by Clan standards) ambush that led to Ulric's demise.

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• Beard of Evil: Rocked a goatee alongside hair that made him look like he had horns.
• Canon Immigrant: Made his first appearance as the Greater-Scope Villain of the BattleTech (1994) cartoon.
• Combat Pragmatist: Chistu was not above using wave attacks or other un-Clanlike tactics to win, most significantly when he goaded Ulric Kerensky into a Trial of Grievance on Wotan. When Kerensky showed up, Chistu opened fire - with a TAG laser, which allowed his entire bodyguard force to open fire with guided long-range missiles, a complete breach of Clan honor rules. Even the somewhat pragmatic Wolves consider inviting someone to an honorable duel then drowning them in enough LRM fire to make a mushroom cloud horrid perfidy; the far more inflexible Falcons would be merciful if they merely stripped him of his rank and assigned him to a solahma unit instead of executing him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Vlad almost died in Chistu's dishonorable attack and had the recordings to prove it, which let Vlad challenge him to a Trial of Grievance and waste him.
• Loophole Abuse: Oh, here's a doozy. After seeing how badly the Wolves are cutting through their forces in the Refusal War, Chistu claims that, by throwing the entirety of Clan Wolf into the Trial of Refusal, Ulric automatically escalated it into a Trial of Absorption. So, after the Wolves are defeated on the Jade Falcon world of Wotan, Chistu informs the survivors they are now Jade Falcons, then performs a Ritual of Abjuration on the Wolves who fled to become Clan Wolf-In-Exile. Thing is, until all the Wolves were defeated, they couldn't be Absorbed. But it would take a Wolf to Refuse the Absorption, and the Wolves-In-Exile have been Abjured, so have no legal standing to do so. A nice, tidy box, if only Chistu had made sure Vlad was actually dead.
• Number Two: Played as one to Elias Crichell, although Crichell more or less let him run the Clan while he played politics. That said, Chistu was known more for his cunning than his leadership skills and definitely planned to supplant Crichell as Khan if he couldn't get himself made ilKhan.
• We Can Rule Together: Defeated and desperate, Chistu tried to get Vlad to take him as a bondsman and offered to be a political advisor. Vlad, disgusted by Chistu's craven offer, incinerated him on the spot with his 'Mech's lasers.
• We Have Reserves: Threw his second-line units into a meat grinder against the Wolves to wear down their front-line troops. The result is that the Wolves lost most of their best warriors and the Falcons lost most of their warriors, period.

Nicolai Malthus

Nicolai Malthus, In-Universe cartoon overlord.

Star Colonel Nicolai Malthus was a trueborn Jade Falcon warrior who participated in the Clan Invasion, serving under (at that point) Galaxy Commander Vandervahn Chistu and seeing action on several worlds of the Lyran front against the Federated Commonwealth before disappearing from Jade Falcon records, possibly dying an unremarkable death during the later waves of the Jade Falcon invasion, on Tukayyid, or during the Refusal War. Later scholarship would reveal that he instead survived to become a prisoner of the Federated Commonwealth and later the Lyran Alliance. Malthus was eventually repatriated to Clan Jade Falcon in disgrace, and sent back to the Homeworlds where he volunteered for a special-forces unit which would lead to his death fighting the Society during the Wars of Reaving.

Malthus would end up being immortalized in a manner highly unusual for a Clan Warrior; rather than leaving behind a blood legacy, he left behind a pop cultural one. In 3052, the Tharkad Broadcasting Company created the Somerset Strikers, a highly sensationalized and mostly fictional propaganda drama 're-telling' an actual intelligence gathering operation performed by Adam Steiner on his former homeworld of Somerset during the Jade Falcon invasion (or in other words, the cartoon). The previously unremarkable Nicolai Malthus was cast as its main villain, responsible both for the initial conquest of Somerset and Adam Steiner's arch-enemy in his battle to take back his home planet. The real Nicolai was not amused by the depiction, and decided to take appropriate Clan action on it (being a POW at the time), only to be told that the Lyran Alliance was NOT a Proud Warrior Race, and that he needed to sue for libel. He did, and it ended about as well as one can expect with the extreme disparity in cultures.

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• Arch-Enemy: Is presented as one to Adam Steiner within the show. In Battletech canon, Steiner was only doing reconnaisance and probably didn't have time to pick fights with any Falcon clusters.
• Canon Foreigner: Unlike practically every other character from the Battletech cartoon, Malthus was not given any in-universe acknowledgement save for the fact that someone with that name existed and participated in the Clan Invasion at some point. He's pretty much treated as a caricature of the Clans in general.
  • Canon Immigrant: The above was true until 2020, when Malthus was given a full, canon, in-universe writeup in the Battletech: Legends artbook. He's still mostly like his cartoon incarnation.
• Character Development: He starts out arrogant and bloodthirsty even by Crusader Clanner standards, but after numerous humiliations (including six months in a Steiner prison) Kael Pershaw gave him another chance as a member of the Watch. Malthus accepted, and eventually died helping put down the Society.
• Courtroom Antics: After the conclusion of the Clan Invasion, Malthus was taken prisoner by the Lyran Alliance. While in captivity, he saw the fictionalized series based upon Adam Steiner's exploits and immediately tried to declare a Trial of Grievance over his depiction in said series. He had to be told that the Alliance's legal system didn't work that way, and that the only way he would be able to get justice in a non-Proud Warrior Race society was to get a lawyer and sue for slander. He did, and it did not go well due to Malthus refusing to play along with Inner Sphere courtroom procedure. In the end, the trial was cut short and the suit dismissed after Malthus tried to challenge the judge to a Circle of Equals!
• Fantastic Racism: Proudly proclaims his genetic superiority to Adam Steiner, and anyone else within earshot.
• Large Ham: A literal Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain (both In-Universe and in the cartoon itself), Nicolai hams it up with the best of them.
• Loophole Abuse: Interprets a Trial of Possession in a very un-Clan like manner by returning Somerset itself to Adam while (somehow) absconding with its entire millions-strong population... Within the broadcast, of course. Canonically, the Jade Falcons left Somerset's civilians mostly alone, save that they re-built its Academy to train their own cadets.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Pretty much his entire schtick, though he becomes increasingly dishonourable as the series progresses.
• The Rival: Has a rivalry with Kristen Redmond, a fellow Star Colonel (who ironically ended up becoming a Canon Immigrant of far greater importance than Malthus).
• Tattoo as Character Type: Has prominent jade-green facial tattoos to emphasise his proud warrior-ness. They're Clan Enhanced Imaging Neural Implants, used only by the hardcorest of hardcore Crusaders, as they have a few side effects.^note Including but not limited to: megalomania, insanity, brain damage, and early death by Clan standards, who consider the age of 30 to be over-the-hill.
• Took a Level in Kindness: While still a Jerkass Large Ham, Legends suggests that he mellowed significantly post Clan-Invasion especially after the removal of his EI implants, which were known to cause mental instability.

Malvina Hazen

"I will take this city (Geneva) if I have to blast it apart one block at a time."

Era(s): Dark Age

The self-styled "Chingis Khan," "ruler of the universe," the only thing bigger than Malvina's ego is her bloodlust. She steals the "Mongol Doctrine" from Clan Hell's Horses and evangelizes for it among the Falcons, but where the Horses sought to replicate the highly mobile, light cavalry style of Mongol forces, Malvina focuses on their reputation for leaving nothing intact and no one alive in their wake.

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• Beyond Redemption: Many have hoped that Malvina's bloodlust and sociopathy could be cured, or at least tempered, because she's a phenomenally effective warrior and leader, the kind any would want to have as an ally, lieutenant, or superior, if not for the afforementioned flaws. Aleks thought he could logically talk her out of her scorched earth Mongol Doctrine, Stephanie Chistu thought Malvina might recant if her way was proved not the only successful one, Alaric Ward hoped Malvina would graciously accept defeat and serve under him as ilKhan. All learned that Malvina is, in fact, this trope, someone who quite probably could never be at peace so long as any human being lived anywhere in the cosmos.
• Brother–Sister Incest: She and her sibkin Aleks have been lovers for quite some time, and openly call each other "brother" and "sister." It should be noted that, among most Trueborn, familial words usually carry an undertone of revulsion, hence "sibkin" instead of brother, sister, or sibling, "geneparent" instead of mother and father, and so on. It's also unusual for Trueborn Clanners to become attached to one another to the exclusion of others; during the Clan Invasion, such an attachment was seen as dangerously unClanlike, especially in Clan Jade Falcon.
• Clash of Evolutionary Levels: Most Clanners, especially Trueborns, believe themselves to be a superior breed of humanity with an objectively superior society. Malvina carries this to its logical conclusion: if the inferior peoples of the Inner Sphere won't submit to the superior Clans, the inferior should be swept aside by the superior.
• Colony Drop: When the Clan's nominal flagship was too badly damaged to be repaired, and after Malvina had killed the Khan to take the title herself, Malvina had the WarShip crashed into the Jade Falcon's capitol city on Wotan, just make a point about who was running things now and how she liked to do things.
• Dark Action Girl: An accomplished MechWarrior who has never left an opponent alive after facing them in single combat, and morally bankrupt.
• Evil Wears Black: Her custom dress uniform, and when she ascends to Khan the uniform of all Jade Falcons who support her Mongol Doctrine, is black trimmed in green so dark it fuctionally is black. Alaric Ward even notes that Malvina apparently missed the fact that black uniforms almost invariably mark those who are Obviously Evil.
• Fan Disservice: Malvina is described as being quite beautiful, especially in her younger years, with her extremely pale skin, white hair, and shapely warrior's body. She's also not particularly modest, stripping naked in front of huge crowds, once on a broadcast to an entire planet. But in that broadcast she slashed her own arms with her knife and coated herself in her own blood to illustrate the fate of anyone who opposed her: she'd bathe in their blood. Malvina's beauty is as cold and cruel as her heart, her penchant for ditching her clothes in public demonstrates how skewed her views are from even Clan norms.
• Femme Fatalons: In contrast to the fashion of most female Clan warriors, Malvina wears her nails long, presumably just so she can tick off another Villain Trope.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Fear for her opponents and most of her subordinates. She'll extract terrible punishments on any Jade Falcons who disobey or disappoint her, making the rest too afraid to even really speak out against her. For others, she inspires them to such heights of bloodlust they embrace her brutality as their own.
• Morality Pet: Aleks. She states repeatedly that while she will kill every single human in the galaxy if that's what's necessary, he is the only one she'd spare. When Aleks is killed in the first assault on Skye, Malvina is free to embrace her utter depravity (not that Aleks was doing a particularly good job reigning her in before that).
• Parental Abuse: Takes a girl named Cynthy as a kind of "pet" after the fighting on Skye, and abuses her consistently to vent her own hatred at. . . well, basically everything and everyone. Malvina's abuse is so awful Cynthy ultimately snaps and murders Malvina to make it stop.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Wholeheartedly believes in the "Mongol Doctrine," or at least her perverted version of it, where victory is best achieved through so terrorizing the opposition they are incapable of fighting back. Examples include "mili-decimation" (rounding up 68,000 at random from a planetary population of 680 million then killing every ten of the 68,000), poisoning a planet's water supply with weapons-grade plutonium, announcing to a city that they have twelve hours to evacuate then levelling the city before marching to the next city which has six hours to evacuate.
• Red Baron: She has several: The Eye of the Falcon, The White Virgin (she's extremely pale, but definitely not a virgin), the Butcher of Wotan, the Mad Falcon.
• Straight for the Commander: The attempted victim of this three times during the fighting on Terra. Devlin Stone first sets False Flag Operations using captured Jade Falcon 'Mechs to attack Alaric Ward and captured Clan Wolf 'Mechs to attack Malvina. She survives. Then Stone pulls out his more-elite-than-elite Old Guard and sends them straight at Malvina with orders to kill her at all costs. She survives. Finally, on the third and final day of the ilClan Trial, Alaric tasks Anastasia Kerensky, the finest MechWarrior of the age, to hunt down and kill Malvina. Anastasia defeats Malvina, but again, Malvina survives.

Clan Smoke Jaguar

In General

The Emblem of Clan Smoke Jaguar

One of the twenty original Clans created by Nicholas Kerensky, Clan Smoke Jaguar quickly became renowned (and reviled) for their unyielding, brutal nature. Focused almost entirely upon war and the art of war, the Clan more or less devolved into a roving band of raiders, taking by force from other Clans what they could not be bothered to build for themselves.

Clan Smoke Jaguar reached the apex of its power during the end of the Political Century; while lagging behind the other Clans due to a lack of infrastructure and civilian backing, their all-in focus on invading the Inner Sphere kept them relevant politically, and it was Clan Smoke Jaguar that initiated the Outbound Light incident that finally decided the matter in the Crusaders' favour. This saw them take the drivers' seat of Operation REVIVAL for the first year, until setbacks and the death of the ilKhan, followed by the disaster at Tukayyid, dealt them unrecoverable blows. Unable to recover their strength, Clan Smoke Jaguar would be evicted from the Inner Sphere by the Second Star League, followed by their wholesale Annihilation by a vengeful Task Force Serpent attacking the Clan Homeworlds.

This was, surprisingly, not the end for Clan Smoke Jaguar. Though the clan as a whole was shattered, various small bands survived and picked their way across the galaxy for the next few decades. During the Dark Age, the last surviving warriors came together as a fighting unit called "Fidelis", and after serving the Republic of the Sphere for some time, made their way back to Clan space and struck a deal with Clan Wolf, that should Clan Wolf become ilClan they would be reformed. When this happened, Clan Smoke Jaguar was officially resurrected as a subject clan to Clan Wolf.

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• Back from the Dead: To the surprise of many, Clan Smoke Jaguar managed to pull this off during the Dark Age.
• The Berserker: Their Hat. Smoke Jaguar doctrine was based almost entirely on brutal, focused strikes using 'Mech combat, and their aerospace and logistics corps were practically nonexistent as Clans went. This came to bite them in the ass during the Battle of Tukkayid, where the ComGuards exploited their hyper aggressiveness and absolutely mauled their invading force by continuously ambushing their forces, all the while goading them into continuing their reckless advance. This is perhaps best exemplified in that the first Clan warrior to land on Tukayyid was a Smoke Jaguar Elemental named Bolin who deliberately waited too long to hit his armor's jump jets in order to be the first on-planet regardless of the cost. He was recognized (and to a degree honored) across all the Clans as the first to land, despite the the landing shattering his legs and severing his spinal cord, ending his military career.
• Crippling Overspecialization: They focused on brutal frontal 'Mech assaults that destroyed everything in sight. That made them deadly opponents in combat bound by the honorable Clan rules, but it put them at a serious disadvantage against opponents who weren't bound by Clan rules and got them to overextend themselves. Their poor logistics and lack of other types of vehicles only compounded the problem.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Smoke Jaguars themselves were as disgusted as anyone by the bombardment of Edo, and the officer who ordered it was immediately challenged out of his command and very probably killed by one of his subordinates for it.
• Fantastic Racism: The absolute bottom of the barrel alongside Steel Viper, seeing anyone who wasn't a Trueborn warrior as essentially less than nothing. This did not work out for them in the long run, in part because they couldn't replace their personnel losses by using bondsmen like most of the other Clans did.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Nobody liked Clan Smoke Jaguar. They were less popular than the Blood Spirits and the Snow Ravens (who at least could rely on the Ghost Bears for alliance), but always a little too powerful to be targeted by a Trial of Absorption. When the Inner Sphere came knocking, the rest of the Home Clans more or less stood aside and let the Jaguars die, with no-one speaking up for them.
• Foil - As the invasion progressed, the Smoke Jaguars became the foil to all the invading Clans. While even the Jade Falcons viewed the people of the Inner Sphere as savages, they at least respected them. But the Smoke Jaguars showed nothing but contempt for the peoples they conquered. The Orbital Bombardment of innocent civilians was such a Kick the Dog moment that even their one time allies - the Jade Falcons - abandoned them.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Pushing for an invasion of the Inner Sphere really didn't work out for them. At all.
• Kick the Dog: The Orbital Bombardment of Turtle Bay during the Invasion. It pretty much marked the Jaguars out for the Inner Sphere's vengeance.
• Make an Example of Them: Their ultimate fate. The Inner Sphere knew they had to send a very clear message to the Clans that the Second Star League was not to be trifled with, and chose to single out the Jaguars for outright Annihilation. They were chosen for their conspicuous brutality during the Clan Invasion, and also because their front was dangerously close to the Draconis capital world of Luthien should the invasion begin again (having already had one conquest attempt of the world thwarted).
• Myopic Conqueror: Always more interested in conquering than ruling, the Smoke Jaguars held very little actual territory amongst the Clans and did little colonization or expansion during the Golden Century. When invading the Inner Sphere, they automatically assumed the civilian population would behave like Clanners and quietly submit to their rightful conquerors. When they didn't, the Jaguars engaged in wholesale brutalization and terror tactics to quell dissent, which was yet another thing that marked them out for Inner Sphere vengeance.
• National Weapon: The Jaguars favoured the Dire Wolf, a design they 'acquired' from Clan Wolf, alongside the Warhawk, Mad Dog and Ebon Jaguar/Cauldron Born, which were of their own designs. The Jaguars were also exclusive users of the Stone Rhino, a Clan refinement of Amaris' Folly.
  • The Smoke Jaguars also invented the ProtoMech, a miniature BattleMech designed for the express purpose of using limited resources most effectively. While Clan Smoke Jaguar was annihilated before the ProtoMech could be irrevocably linked with them, they invented them, were the first to deploy them, and many of the opening shots of the Wars of Reaving were fought over obtaining this new development by an extinct Clan.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Smoke Jaguars wanted to invade the Inner Sphere, become the ilClan, and reform the Star League under their leadership. Leo Showers' manipulation of the facts in the lead-up to the invasion led to numerous Clans being left out (which eventually led to the Wars of Reaving, among other problems), and the Smoke Jaguars' brutality during the invasion led to the fractured Inner Sphere uniting and forming the Second Star League with the main goal of wiping them out, and then proceeding to end the Clan Invasion itself with the Great Refusal.
• Paper Tiger: The Smoke Jaguars' lack of infrastructure or ability to replace their material losses meant that any war where they could not salvage enemy equipment while losing their own would go badly for them. Following the battles of Wolcott, Luthien and finally Tukayyid, their power was more or less spent. The Jaguar leadership was keen to hide this and keep up a facade of being the champion of the Crusader cause; their true strength was revealed when the Second Star League started steamrolling them and finding it a bit easier than expected.
• The Remnant: What the new Clan Smoke Jaguar essentially is. Though they exist once again in some form, they are a far, far cry from their glory days, with no vote in the council.
• The Rival: Clan Nova Cat and Clan Mongoose, though frankly pretty much everyone except Jade Falcon had the Jaguars on their permanent 'disliked' list. When looking to exploit his de facto forced appointment as ilKhan by assigning bitter rival clans as reinforcements to the initial invader clans, Ulric Kerensky could have paired them up with practically anyone and have it go badly, though the Nova Cats proved particularly bad teammates for the Battle of Luthien.
• Token Evil Teammate: Very few Clans have much good to say about Clan Smoke Jaguar, even in a society so focused on internal war, battle, and rivalries. Extremely aggressive and focused only on martial pursuits, the Jaguars raided practically all other Clans for the resources and equipment needed to keep their war-machine going instead of producing anything of their own. During the invasion of the Inner Sphere the Jaguars crossed a line when they ordered the civilian settlement of Turtle Bay eradicated by Orbital Bombardment, causing the other Clans to immediately bid away all their WarShips for use in planetary warfare. As for the Inner Sphere, this conduct was so shocking that it galvanized most of its nations against the Clan invaders, and they later subjected the Smoke Jaguars to a Trial of Annihilation in all but name through Operation BULLDOG and by invading the Jaguar homeworld of Huntress.

Leo Showers

ilKhan Leo Showers

Era(s): Clan Invasion

Khan of Clan Smoke Jaguar in the years leading up to the Clan Invasion. A highly charismatic and visionary leader, Leo Showers was a staunch Crusader and repeatedly sought to bring the Clans to war against the Inner Sphere. When the ComStar survey vessel Outbound Light chanced upon the Clan Homeworlds, Showers knew he'd found his casus belli and selectively used knowledge of the Inner Sphere taken from the ship to convince the Clans to invade in Operation REVIVAL, becoming the first ilKhan of the Clans in centuries and overall leader of the invasion. He would be killed early on in the Invasion when a Rasalhague fighter rammed the bridge of his ship.

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• Big Bad: As the direct cause of the Clan Invasion and the overall leader of the Invading Clans, he served as this to the Inner Sphere during the first year of the Invasion.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • He forced Clan Wolf into the 'position of honour' during Operation REVIVAL. Ulric Kerensky would use this position to frustrate the Crusaders at every turn by not having to worry about bidding and deciding to Beat Them at Their Own Game.
  • As ilKhan, he favoured Clan Smoke Jaguar during the Invasion. The Jaguars, wanting to live up to his expectations, decided to take on the positions of greatest Honor. They quickly ended up overextending themselves and throwing themselves into self-destructive battles that exhausted and ultimately saw the Clan wiped out a few years later.
  • He stayed on the Dire Wolf to oversee Clan Wolf. This meant that upon his death, Ulric Kerensky was the closest possible scapegoat, and the Crusader Clans decided to punish him by making him the next ilKhan. To say this ended up biting the Crusaders in the ass would be an understatement.
• Keeping the Enemy Close: He spent the Invasion aboard the Clan Wolf flagship Dire Wolf, both as a way to appear impartial and to keep the Wolves under close scrutiny.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: The sudden appearance of the ComStar JumpShip Outbound Light over his capital world Huntress in 3046 gave Showers the perfect opportunity to break the decades-long stalemate between the Wardens and the Crusaders. By using knowledge gained from the ship and its crew, he convinced his fellow Khans that the Inner Sphere was on the verge of discovering the Clan homeworlds, and that the Clans might be the ones in danger of an invasion. His arguments swayed 15 of the 16 Khans, only Ulric Kerensky of Clan Wolf objected, and after a failed Trial of Refusal planning for Operation: REVIVAL began with Showers elected ilKhan to lead it.
• Metaphorically True: Showers very selectively used the knowledge gathered from the Outbound Light, conveniently ignoring or not mentioning several signs that the ship had chanced upon the Clans by accident and was not the vanguard of an Inner Sphere invasion force.
• The Rival: Of Ulric Kerensky, the two spending nearly two decades as leaders of opposite factions before Showers got the upper hand.
• The Social Expert: What Showers lacked in foresight and planning, he more than made up with using words and passion. The Wardens drastically lost power during his tenure as Khan, and the Outbound Light incident ended in a 16-1 landslide decision in favour of Operation REVIVAL. The death of Showers fully threw the Clans into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: His ultimate fate, courtesy of a hull breach on the bridge of the Dire Wolf. In a somewhat more realistic version than normal, several other people on the bridge at the time, including Ulric Kerensky, evacuated safely even as the atmosphere was lost: Showers was simply standing too close to the windows to get clear in time.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His desire to launch the Clan Invasion would ultimately cause the complete Annihilation of his entire Clan.
• Visionary Villain: A very straight example, wanting to lead the Clans into glorious combat and subdue the Inner Sphere with the ultimate goal of ruling as ilKhan of a reformed Star League.

Lincoln Osis

The Last Smoke Jaguar Khan

Era(s): Clan Invasion

The final Khan of Clan Smoke Jaguar, leading them during the Clan Invasion, and ilKhan after Elias Crichell and Ulric Kerensky. A Crusader like most Smoke Jaguars, he presided over the Clans during Operations BULLDOG, SERPENT, and the Great Refusal.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Nobody becomes a Khan without knowing how to fight, but Osis gained his Bloodname by overcoming MechWarriors in augmented combat. As an Elemental, that would put him at a serious disadvantage.^note Elementals are bred and trained to fight in Power Armor; Osis would have had to defeat 'Mechs while on foot.
• Dumb Muscle: Elementals are stereotypically seen as stupid by other trueborn and as being inept at leadership roles. While this is normally just a stereotype and little more, in Osis' case it turned out to be true. He refused to learn anything from Luthien and Tukayyid and doubled down on Jaguar doctrine instead, even as other Clans such as Jade Falcon and Diamond Shark began to drastically reassess their strategies after getting their clocks cleaned by ComStar, and ultimately his actions led to Trent's defection, Operation BULLDOG, Operation SERPENT, and his own Clan's annihilation.
• Everyone Has Standards: For all Lincoln Osis' Hair-Trigger Temper, he considers sadism to be beneath a warrior's dignity; in Malicious Intent, he's openly disgusted by Vlad Ward spending several minutes slowly and graphically crushing Elias Crichell's throat, and clearly expects that if Vlad's going to kill Crichell, he should just get it done.
• Faster Than They Look: His size makes Osis look like he should be slow. As the below-mentioned nekokami team leader found out, he's actually very fast indeed.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • He did everything he could to hide how vulnerable the Jaguars were from the other Clans because he knew they'd turn on him at the first opportunity, treating getting forced out of the Inner Sphere as an internal Clan matter. As a result, the other Clans turned their backs on him and his Clan when the SLDF hit the Jaguar homeworld of Huntress, as it was an internal Clan matter as far as they were concerned.
  • This same misdirection also 'worked' on the Inner Sphere, who targeted the Jaguars with Operation Bulldog partially because they were seen as the strongest Invader Clan next to the Nova Cats (who were off the table due to treaties with the Draconis Combine) following the Refusal War crippling Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon. In reality the Jaguars were the weakest of the Invader Clans, and folded almost immediately under Inner Sphere pressure.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He was noted for it, and it nearly got him killed on Huntress. A group of nekekami ambushed him and his guards, one challenging him to a Trial of Grievance in a Circle of Equals because they weren't allowed to just assassinate him. Osis laughed at the idea of meeting an Inner Sphere assassin in an honorable duel until the taunts started.
• Loophole Abuse: There wasn't really a specific rule saying a Khan had to give up their post when they rose to ilKhan, so he kept both titles. The other Khans pointed out he was acting solely in the interest of the Jaguars, not the Clans in general, and demanded he either step down as ilKhan or handle the invasion of Huntress without their help.
• The Peter Principle: Osis was one of the finest duelists of his generation and a decent tactician, but those skills did not translate to leading an entire clan on the strategic level or controlling his subordinates. The Orbital Bombardment of Turtle Bay cost him a lot of face, and his disastrous handling of Luthien, Tukayyid and underestimating the Inner Sphere's capacity to strike back saw the Smoke Jaguars Annihilated under his command.
• The Remnant / Last Stand: The Smoke Jaguars who retreated with Osis to Strana Mechty after the Battle of Huntress were - as far as Osis knew - the last Jaguar warriors still alive, and were cut to pieces during the Great Refusal. Even if he had won his part of the Trial and defeated Victor Steiner-Davion, the Smoke Jaguars were finished as a united force.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: He was suspected dead during the Battle of Tukayyid. Turns out he was just pinned under a destroyed 'Mech.
• Scary Black Man: He was an Elemental, notably dark-skinned, and a fierce combatant.
• Suicide by Cop: He asked Victor Steiner-Davion to kill him after his defeat on Strana Mechty. When Victor refused and turned to leave, Osis stood to attack him, and Victor beheaded him with a katana out of reflex.
• You Can Barely Stand: Inverted. Even with advanced Clan medical science, Osis had at most three weeks between getting his leg nearly severed in his duel with the nekekami and suiting up in the Great Refusal. Victor notes that he's clearly badly injured.

Trent

The man who made the Great Refusal possible

Era(s): Clan Invasion

Trent of Clan Smoke Jaguar was a trueborn warrior that remained un-Bloodnamed for his career. He participated in the Clan Invasion and fought at the Battle of Tukayyid, following which his status as one of the survivors of that shameful display saw him repeatedly belittled, betrayed, overlooked and mistreated by his superiors and sibkin, leaving him increasingly jaded towards Clan life. Trent would eventually betray his Clan to the Inner Sphere and was the one who acquired and delivered the navigation data to the Clan homeworlds to ComStar, allowing Task Force SERPENT and the Great Refusal to take place.

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• Awesomeness by Analysis: Trent had a very un-Jaguar-like sense of strategic awareness and data analysis, and was able to figure out enemy battle plans on the fly by looking at the right things. Naturally, this got him nothing but scorn and abuse given which Clan he belonged to.
• Benevolent Boss: He treated his bondsman Judith well for a trueborn Clanner, even after learning she was part of ROM and wanted him to turn coat.
• Briar Patching: After he decides to turn on the Jaguars, he and Judith plan out how to get him sent back to Huntress so they can map out the Exodus Road. He manages to get someone else to mention to his commanding officer (who detests him and wants to get rid of Trent) that his greatest fear is to be sent back to Huntress as part of the honor guard for his dead sibkin's remains. The man immediately assigns him as the honor guard.
• Cain and Abel: A sympathetic Cain to his sibkin Jez's Abel, eventually killing her after she had spent better part of a decade sabotaging his career and rubbing her brutality in his face.
• Combat Pragmatist: Unusually so for a Clanner, and even more so for a Smoke Jaguar warrior, who are typically The Berserker. While trying to win a Bloodname in the Grand Melee, he stuck to the edge and picked off opponents rather than charge in and get hammered from every direction. It didn't work, but only because his 'Mech was sabotaged. While looking at the terrain they had tracked an enemy unit to, he immediately figured out it was an ambush designed to lead them into an explosive trap. His commanding officer ignored him and ordered the unit to proceed anyway - right into an ambush.
• Cyborg: Had most of the right side of his body rebuilt with cybernetics following Tukayyid.
• Defector from Decadence: How he saw his own defection, considering the Smoke Jaguars to have become irredeemably tainted.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Repeatedly, mostly through the machinations of his own Clan. As one of the non-Bloodnamed by his thirties, Trent was pretty much considered a nobody on his way to a solahma unit.
• Facial Horror: Among his extensive injuries sustained during Tukayyid was having most of the right side of his face burned off and replaced with artificial skin, and his right eye so badly damaged they had to grow him a new one and implant a metal frame in his eye socket to help it move.
• Faking the Dead: He nearly gets killed by his own forces after managing to get transferred back to the Inner Sphere by a CO he was friends with who had just been arrested for "retasking" captured war materiel so Huntress's defenses could be maintained properly. Luckily, the Inner Sphere unit he was supposed to link up with attacked, and he fired his autocannons into the ground to kick up a dust and smoke cloud and ejected before his 'Mech exploded. Then he does it again after the Great Refusal, having officially died fighting against the Ice Hellions.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Trent's life became this, being present for much of Clan Smoke Jaguar's decline post-Tukayyid as just another anonymous warrior and eventually the catalyst for Clan Smoke Jaguar's final downfall. He would finally die anonymously, fighting for Clan Nova Cat on behalf of the Inner Sphere.
• Hope Spot: Following Tukayyid and the death of Lincoln Osis and Sarah Weaver, Trent's fortunes looked like they were improving with the ascension of Reasonable Authority Figure Brandon Howell to the spot as new Jaguar Khan. Sadly, Osis turns out to be not as dead as reported and firmly re-establishes authority, rejecting Howell's planned reforms and punishing all his followers (including Trent) by proxy.
• Kill It with Fire: His 'Mech took a lot of Inferno missiles at Tukayyid, which resulted in him needing a lot of the right side of his body replaced.
• The Last DJ: One of the few Smoke Jaguars to actually believe in the Honour Road and refusing to play politics, which did not go well for him.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: His commanding officer was very specifically ordered to make sure he didn't come back from his last battle as a Smoke Jaguar, in part by abandoning him on the other side of a river with enemy forces. Lucky for him the "enemy forces" he was left to were actually there to extract him as a defector.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Reached this stage after repeated exposure to Clan politics, backstabbing and the Smoke Jaguars' brutal treatment of their own civilians, and helped a member of ROM steal the navigational data that allowed Task Force SERPENT to reach the Clan Homeworlds. His only demand was a command of his own and being allowed to fight against Clan Smoke Jaguar during the Great Refusal.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When the Smoke Jaguars were getting mauled on Tukayyid, Trent repeatedly tried to warn his superiors what was happening (only to be cut off repeatedly) and followed orders to rescue Jez, another member of his Cluster, who was refusing to retreat. His 'Mech gets destroyed and he gets mangled saving her, and it only goes From Bad to Worse for him from there.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: To the extent that a Clanner can be. When he was assigned to a unit of misfits being sent back to the Clan Homeworlds, he took command, whipped them into shape, and tried to instill the values of the Honour Road in them. He also was well-aware that eradicating towns in retaliation for the slightest resistance was not a great way to endear the Clan to the locals of any given planet.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Repeatedly post-Tukayyid, being put on garrison and rebel-hunting duty in the Jaguar conquests.
• The Scapegoat: Most of his career post-Tukayyid led to him being repeatedly used as such, often when his own stolen plans went wrong because the ones who stole them failed to follow his recommendations.
• Small Role, Big Impact: All told, his part in the Clan Invasion was very small. But his actions let the Second Star League not only expel the Jaguars from the Inner Sphere, but also attack their homeworld of Huntress, Annhiliate their Clan, and bring the Invasion itself to an end with the Great Refusal.
• That Man Is Dead: He was given the name "Baldur" following the Great Refusal, "Trent" having officially died fighting it.
• Token Heroic Orc: He was a Smoke Jaguar warrior, and a Crusader to boot (at least early on), only to switch sides to the Inner Sphere and hand over just what the Second Star League needed to take out the Smoke Jaguars.
• Two-Faced: As a result of his injuries at Tukayyid. Unusually for this trope, he was pretty decent if not exactly heroic.
• Unfriendly Fire: He incinerates Jez with his 'Mech's lasers when she told him that the brutal actions he had been protesting so much were expected and endorsed from the Khans on down.
• Written by the Winners: Winds up the victim of this. He takes critical injuries during the Battle of Tukayyid rescuing his sibkin Jez from a losing fight she refused to retreat from, and falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he finds out that the official story is she rescued him, and she's won the Bloodname and been assigned the command he was in line for. Jez practically quotes the trope name at him.

Clan Ghost Bear

In General

The Emblem of Clan Ghost Bear

Clan Ghost Bear was one of the original twenty Clans, and marked itself from the beginning by refusing to have a single Khan as leader. Led by a husband and wife team (which would inspire the post of saKhan in Nicholas Kerensky), the Ghost Bears were a conservative, careful lot extremely focused on interal cohesion and seeing the Clan as an extended family.

Devoted Crusaders (although cautious, as always), the Ghost Bears took part in the Clan Invasion as one of the Invader Clans and conquered most of the Rasalhague worlds during or shortly after the Invasion, pushing Clan Wolf out of their central position. Events within the clan's politics before and after the Battle of Tukayyid saw an introspective Warden, Bjorn Jorgensson, ascend to Khanship, and his perspective steered the Clan towards the Warden camp in the years leading up to the Great Refusal. The clan officially announced their change in political alignment by declining to participate in the Great Refusal, considering it purely a Crusader adventure, and they should defend it (and inspiring all other Warden clans at the Council to follow suit), and moved their entire population and Clan World infrastructure to their new holdings. During the Jihad the Ghost Bears began to integrate their Clan into the Rasalhague population, forming the Ghost Bear Dominion and later renaming it to the Rasalhague Dominion.

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• Arch-Enemy: Became one of the most implacable foes of the Word Of Blake during the Jihad, as they did not take the bombing of their civilians, the targeted biological attacks against prominent bloodname houses, and the death of their Khan well at all.
• Battle Couple: Clan Ghost Bear was founded by two married warriors. Hans Ole Jorgensen and Sandra Tseng were ordered by Nicholas Kerensky to join separate Clans. They refused and fled into the antarctic of Strana Mechty. They nearly died but were saved by a family of ghost bears. When they returned, Nicholas was so impressed he allowed them to stay together. This bond between their leaders became the basis for the stronger quasi-familial bond between fellow Ghost Bear clansmen that other clans often do not have.
• Bears Are Bad News: Downplayed. Clan Ghost Bear picked the Ghost Bear as their totem to invoke this trope, but despite this the Ghost Bears are one of the less belligerent Clans. Generally speaking, though, you do not want to push their Berserk Button. Both ComStar and the Word of Blake learned just how dangerous they could be when roused. In its way, this combines with:
• Beary Friendly: If you're their family, they'll go to war for you. Even if you'e an enemy, meet them with courage, honor, and respect, and you'll be shown the same (see Make Games, Not War).
• Berserk Button: Do not harm anyone Ghost Bears consider family, especially their civilians. It will not end well for you.
• Bigger Is Better: Thanks to having held resource-rich worlds in Clan Space for a long time, Ghost Bear combat doctrine favours heavy and assault 'Mechs and overwhelming firepower, though as typical for Clanners they favour speed more than they do armour even in their heavier 'Mechs. Assisted by the naval expertise from their close allies, Clan Snow Raven, the Ghost Bears also built the most massive space warship class ever built: the aptly-named Leviathan-class.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Ghost Bears have a distinct unit in their forces, the 139th Striker Cluster, originally in Alpha Galaxy. They adopted Inner Sphere tactics when facing such opponents in place of following the rules of Zellbrigen. Their effectiveness prompted Clan Ghost Bear to form Omega Galaxy, a whole new unit drafted to use such tactical and strategic doctrine, with the 139th as the core cadre. They have been used to great effectiveness in engagements with their border adversaries in the Inner Sphere, the Draconis Combine.
• Dirty Coward: Subverted. Their renouncing of the Crusader ideology on the eve of the Great Refusal may seem like this, but in truth both Khans, as well as a significant portion of their warriors, were already genuine Wardens by the time of the Great Refusal - they simply chose that moment to make the change in heart public.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Very Downplayed but worth mentioning. When a Ghost Bear Warrior dies, their Great Work is displayed at their funeral. Occasionally that Great Work is a play or story, which results in a bunch of mourners getting a literal show.
• Glass Cannon: They prefer to use 'Mechs that have good speed, and plenty of fire power, even at the expense of armor and heatsinks.
• Going Native: In contrast to the other Invader Clans, who see the Inner Sphere planets as holdings and property of the Clan, the Ghost Bears were the first clan to migrate wholesale to their Inner Sphere holdings. They later created a fusion culture of Clan and Inner Sphere and became as much Rasalhague as the Rasalhagians became Clanners.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The Ghost Bears are extremely careful as Clans go, and unless their Berserk Button is pushed they're liable to abandon a fight if there's little to be gained from it. During Tukayyid, the Ghost Bears were able to take one of their objectives but gave up on the other to save their landing position from a ComStar flank attack, accepting a partial victory rather than fight to the last. And, most famously, they announced their adoption of the Warden perspective on the eve of the Great Refusal, washing their hands and essentially giving no contest to the challenge of Refusal issued by the Second Star League's forces. All the other Warden clans followed suit, as the whole Clan Invasion was a Crusader folly in their eyes.
• Loophole Abuse: The Ghost Bears avoided fighting in (and being bound by) the Great Refusal by repudiating the Crusader Philosophy, proclaiming that their new Inner Sphere state would protect and guide the Inner Sphere in accordance with the Wardens' beliefs. Every other predominantly Warden-minded clan followed suit. The Inner Sphere, knowing from Tukayyid just how fierce the Ghost Bears could be and grateful that the Ghost Bear khans' motion effectively halved the number of clans that would answer the challenge of Refusal, accepted.
• Make Games, Not War: A notable Ghost Bear conquest during the Clan Invasion was the world of Sheliak, which had no defenses or military but a very active American Football league and bid their planet's All-Star team in a football game for the Trial of Possession. The Ghost Bears, seeing this as a valid challenge in both spirit and letter of the Honour Road, promptly bid a binary of Elementals who were also American Football fans. Since the Ghost Bear team was comprised of Elementals, the Sheliak All-Stars were flattened 84-3, succeeding in getting three points off the Ghost Bears at the last minute, and Sheliak was handed over peacefully during the post-game. The Sheliak All-Stars players commented that, despite the curb-stomp in the score against giant stacks of muscle for opponents, it was the cleanest game they ever played, which was a result of Elementals who play the sport viewing personal fouls as a mark of shame.
• My Greatest Failure: During the Annihilation of the Not-Named, Clan Ghost Bear, annoyed that the honour of Annihilation was entirely given to Clan Wolf and not shared with the other Clans, allowed a small contingent of the Not-Named to escape during a chance encounter. The reveal of this event became a permanent stain on the Ghost Bears' honour, and made the Not-Named Clan a particularly sore subject to them.
  And this we hold sacred,
  That no Deed be left undone;
  The Not-Named escaped the Wolf,
  but they shall not escape the Bear again.
• National Weapon: The Executioner, Grizzly and Kodiak are classic Ghost Bear 'Mechs, the latter being an in-universe ur-example of a Totem 'Mech: Most Clans would not design Totem 'Mechs until after the Clan Invasion while the Kodiak was designed at the turn of the 31st century.
• The Rival: The Ghost Bears mainly feuded with Clan Hell's Horses and Clan Steel Viper, though they were no fans of Clan Diamond Shark. Ulric gave the Diamond Sharks the job of reinforcing the Ghost Bears during the second phase of the Clan Invasion, and the Sharks took their sweet time doing so, barely arriving in time to participate in the Battle of Tukayyid. Following the Wars of Reaving, the Rasalhague Dominion and the Hell's Horses generally treat each other as a Worthy Opponent.
• Thicker Than Water: The Ghost Bears' Hat. Family is vital, which amongst other things means that Trueborn who test out of the Warrior Caste are still considered Family and thus equals to their sibkin. During the Wars of Reaving, this quasi-familial bond meant far less of their Scientist castemen joined The Society than in other clans. Many similar cultural elements with the predominantly scandanavian-cultured Free Rasalhague Republic citizens they came to rule over ended up being the foundation of a kinship as well, leading to the merging of cultures and eventual founding of the clan/inner-sphere hybrid state known as the Rasalhague Dominion.
• Warrior Poet: After the death of Kahn Kilbourne Jorgensson, the Warrior caste is expected to have a Great Work that they would work on each day until they died. The other castes aren't expected to but many do anyway. The Great Work is usually a form of art, and is displayed or performed at the warrior's funeral, included in their codex, and is put on permenant display in their Blood Chapel.

Sandra Tseng

The founding Khan of Clan Ghost Bear, Sandra Tseng was originally a Mechwarrior of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces. Like many citizens of the Inner Sphere, Sandra found herself unwilling to stand by and do nothing as Stefan Amaris transformed the Terran Hegemony into a despotic nightmare, and defected to the SLDF in the lead-up to Operation CHIEFTAIN. Following the war, she married fellow soldier Hans Ole Jorgensson and elected to go with him on the Exodus, eventually starting a family with him in the Kerensky Cluster.

Unfortunately, the pair would suffer a major tragedy after their son was murdered in one of the many riots leading up to the Exodus Civil War. Electing to join Nicholas Kerensky in his Second Exodus, Sandra and Hans would go into temporary exile after refusing the Great Founder's demand to take up command of separate units, refusing to be parted from one another. Eventually returning from the wilds of Strana Mechty with tales of how they were sheltered by a family of ghost bears, Sandra would take up the role as Khan of the newly established Clan Ghost Bear, with Hans serving as her saKhan.

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• Action Girl: As to be expected from one of the founding Khans. Sandra was already an experienced Mechwarrior before joining the SLDF, and further proved her valour in both Operations CHIEFTAIN and KLONDIKE. Even centuries later, she's held up as an exemplar of what a Clan Warrior should be, while Ghost Bear Warriors are encouraged to emulate "the courage of Tseng" in all things.
• Defector from Decadence: Initially a Capellan Mechwarrior, Sandra was part of the thirty-six regiments worth of volunteers who joined up with the SLDF in protest of how the Great Houses had abandoned the Hegemony to Amaris' tyranny
• Happily Married: To Hans Ole Jorgensson. Nothing would keep them apart, not the deprivations of the Exodus, or the loss of their son, or even a direct command from Nicholas Kerensky himself.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Her son was killed amidst the rising nationalist and ethnic tensions that would spark the Exodus Civil War.
• Undying Loyalty: Besides her loyalty to her husband, Sandra encouraged this mindset amongst her nascent Clan, helping to bring about the inter-caste cooperation and sense of family that defines the Ghost Bears to this day. In addition, she and Hans were amongst the few officers aboard the Prinz Eugen to remain loyal when the rest of the ship mutinied during the Exodus.

Bjorn Jorgensson

Khan of Clan Ghost Bear

The Khan of Clan Ghost Bear during the latter half of Operation REVIVAL/the Clan Invasion, Bjorn originally washed out of MechWarrior training, but as per his Clan's tradition, he was given the ability to retrain in a different military arm; in this case, he retrained as an Aerospace Pilot and won the rank of Star Captain. When Aletha Kabrinski was elected saKhan, she would immediately level charges against then-Khan Karl Bourjon for his incompetence in leading the Ghost Bears' invasion corridor, and the Clan's warriors would nominate Bjorn as his replacement.

Successfuly defeating Bourjon in a Trial of Refusal called by the latter over this decision, Jorgensson's reforms would retrack the Clan's invasion progress while simultaneously providing services that would help integration efforts with the native Rasalhagian populations. However, with the invasion's progress stalled by the Truce of Tukayyid, and seeing the writing on the wall with the growing discontent in the Homeworlds, Bjorn initiated an ambitious - and successful - plan to relocate almost the entirety of his Clan's civilian castes and infrastructure to their Occupation Zone, with the assistance of the Ghost Bears' perrennial allies, Clan Snow Raven. By the time the secret en-masse move was complete, the Great Refusal was called in an emergency Grand Council session by the Second Star League's expeditionary force that found the Clan Homeworlds and annihilated Clan Smoke Jaguar in detail as an example. Khan Jorgenson famously led the way for Warden clans to bow out of what they viewed as a Crusader folly, offering no contest to the New SLDF's Refusal challenge.

Ultimately, Bjorn would be killed on Arc-Royal in 3073, one of the many casualties of the infamous "Donner Bombing", but his legacy as one of the greatest Khans of Clan Ghost Bear would not be soon forgotten.

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• Ace Pilot: Was a noted Aerospace Fighter pilot, winning the rank of Star Captain in his Trial of Position, which necessitated defeating three of his opponents. He actually was of the MechWarrior phenotype, and failed his initial Trial of Position to pilot a 'Mech. Clan Ghost Bear has a "waste not" philosophy pertaining to personnel, so he was allowed to retrain and try again in a different service category. This gave him some insight in the advantages of combined arms, since he himself had training in both BattleMech and Aerospace combat. Because his body build is almost to the level of "small Elemental", and aerospace fighter pilot phenotypes tend to be very slight, the only aerospace fighter he fits in is a super-heavy Kirghiz omnifighter.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: Sought to invoke this image in regards to his Clan, moving in Provisional Garrison Clusters (PGCs) as well as the Clan's Merchant Caste, allowing the devastated infrastructure of the conquered worlds to be rebuilt and then some, as well as allowing the natives some measure of self-government; this would not only allow the Clan's front-line troops to greatly increase their progress in the invasion, it would prove to greatly assist in the long-term integration of the Ghost Bears and Rasalhagians, especially once the Clan moved wholesale into the Inner Sphere. The legacy of his efforts to this end is the Rasalhague Dominion, a Clan/Inner Sphere hybrid state composed of Clan Ghost Bear and the Free Rasalhague Republic.
• Inspirational Martyr: His death in the above-mentioned suicide bombing drove the Ghost Bears into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, with the Clan quickly becoming one of the most brutal of the Word of Blake's enemies.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When the leadership of Task Force SERPENT stood before the Grand Council on Strana Mechty and issued a challenge to a Trial of Refusal against the entire Clan Invasion, the warden-minded Jorgenson and his converted saKhan, Aletha Kabrinski, saw their chance to enable the Warden Clans to divest themselves entirely of what they saw as a Crusader folly. Clan Ghost Bear renounced the Crusader philosophy, offered no contest, and one by one the other Warden Clans followed suit, leaving just the Crusader Clans to answer the challenge.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In addition the reforms mentioned under Benevolent Alien Invasion, he was also privately a Warden, a stance that the rest of his clan would adopt in time, leading to the renouncement of the Crusader ideology on the eve of the Great Refusal.

Clan Steel Viper

In General

Emblem of Clan Steel Viper.

Clan Steel Viper was one of the most martially focused and politically arrogant of the Clans, even by Clan standards. They held contradictory views, believing fervently in the superiority of trueborns over freeborns while also expecting to rebuild the Star League through cooperation with the Great Houses. Strong enough to win a place in the invasion force, the Vipers ended up losing the key battles they fought in and were driven back to the Homeworlds, where their Ax-Crazy leader triggered the Wars of Reaving that ended with the destruction of many Clans - including the Steel Vipers themselves.

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• Demoted to Extra: One of the more prominently featured Clans at first, being part of the initial invasion force and either directly appearing or at least being mentioned in most Clan-oriented works. After the Twilight of the Clans series they were driven out of the Inner Sphere entirely, appearing only in works dealing with the Home Clans, and finally vanishing from BattleTech canon for years before their fate was revealed in the Wars of Reaving sourcebook.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: After their early history, Clan Steel Viper is actively dismissive of non-Steel Vipers and their generally self-serving behavior alienates just about everybody else. Even the first (and only) real alliance they forge - with Clan Star Adder - is founded upon self-interest and ends with the Adder Khan setting them up for annihilation.
• The Fundamentalist: Steel Vipers view themselves as the only Clan following Nicholas Kerensky's true vision. They are reluctant to induct bondsmen from outside the Clan but will sometimes do so, welcoming the wayward Clansman "back" to the true ways of the Clans.
• Killed Off for Real: Unlike Clan Smoke Jaguar, there are no remnants of Steel Viper left to pull the Clan back together, nor is it likely any such remnants would be allowed to.
• Quality over Quantity: Steel Viper's tough training results in a higher-than-average dropout rate, giving them a smaller force of highly-skilled Warriors. Due to zellbrigen reducing Clan battles to one-on-one duels, having better-trained Warriors works well for them on a per-battle basis, but as a whole it made them one of the weakest Clans as they lacked manpower for larger operations.
• Take a Third Option: Clan Steel Viper is classed as a 'Warden Clan', in that they believe in serving as the Inner Sphere's protectors. But they also share the Crusaders' goal of returning to the Inner Sphere and rebuilding the Star League from its foundations - the Vipers would just prefer to work with the Houses rather than conquer them. In reality their Trueborn supremacist viewpoint and refusal to compromise made this option a non-starter from the get-go.
• Training from Hell: Steel Viper Warrior training is especially harsh, even by Clan standards. This results in a larger than average proportion of Trueborns in civilian castes.

Ellie Kinnison

Ellie Kinnison, the Not-Named Khan

Era(s): Succession Wars

The first Khan of Clan Steel Viper who attempted to assassinate Jennifer Winson, Nicholas Kerensky's wife. She is called the Traitor Khan or the Not-Named Khan.

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• The Berserker: Her fighting style
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: She has a scar over her blind left eye and she tried to murder Nicholas Kerensky's wife.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Her journals revealed she tried to kill Jennifer Winson because she hoped Nicholas Kerensky would turn to her for love and support.
• Obsessive Love Letter: She sent a live steel viper to Nicholas Kerensky as a gift.
• Un-person: Zig-zagged. Kinnison was Abjured after a failed attempt to assassinate Nicholas Kerensky's wife. As Steel Viper's saKhan was instrumental to foiling the assassination attempt, Kerensky wrote her off as a single bad apple and had her Abjured post-mortem, the first time this was ever done in Clan society. The saKhan was promptly elected Khan in her place. Though her name is not mentioned, she is still remembered in the Remembrance of Clan Steel Viper.
• Yandere: To Nicholas Kerensky.

Brett Andrews

Brett Andrews, The Bloody ilKhan

Era(s): Clan Invasion, Wars of Reaving

Posthumously dubbed "The Bloody ilKhan", Brett Andrews of the Steel Vipers became ilKhan of the Clans in the years following the Great Refusal. Instituting the Wars of Reaving both to benefit his own Clan and to 'purify' Clan society, Andrews would go down in history as the most destructive leader the Clans ever had and the greatest upheaver of the Honour Road since its creation by Nicholas Kerensky.

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• A Day in the Limelight: He represented Clan Steel Viper at its most important, and in turn caused the ascendance of Clan Star Adder to the most powerful Home Clan.
• Ace Pilot: Andrews was one of the finest MechWarriors of his generation, and would frequently settle with force what he (all too often) failed to settle with diplomacy.
• All for Nothing: He engineered the Wars of Reaving to wipe out or weaken the Vipers' rival Clans, expel the original Invader Clans from the homeworlds, and put the Steel Vipers on track to lead a renewed invasion of the Inner Sphere. But by the time the wars reached their conclusion, Andrews was dead on the floor of the Grand Council chamber, the Steel Vipers were Annihilated, and the Clans as a whole were so weakened from infighting that another invasion was all but impossible.
• Ambition Is Evil: Driven by the ambition to strengthen Steel Viper, to take revenge on the Clan's traditional enemies of Clan Snow Raven and Jade Falcon and to obtain his vision of a 'pure' Clan society that could take over the Inner Sphere, Andrews comitted atrocity after atrocity to reach his goals.
• Blood on the Debate Floor: Both how he died, and why — first using a throwing knife to kill the Diamond Shark saKhan Angus Labov in a "Trial of Refusal," then shooting Star Adder Khan N'Buta with a forbidden weapon for the same reason. Both took place right on the floor of the Grand Council, one at the start and one at the end of the Wars of Reaving. The second murder proved too much for the Clans to take, and they voted immediately and unanimously to strip Andrews of his power. Andrews declared his own Trial of Refusal and, showing the exact same level of reverence for Clan procedure as Andrews himself had, Star Adder saKhan Hannibal Banacek beat Andrews to death with Banacek's ceremonial mask.
• The Caligula: Hooo boy. Andrews made Leo Showers look sensible by comparison.
• Due to the Dead: Clan Steel Viper's Superweapon Surprise during the Wars of Reaving was the Perigard Zalman, the absolute deadliest WarShip ever designed (so much so offical stats for it have yet to be released). Perigard Zalman was Khan before Andrews, Andrews served as saKhan under Zalman, and much of Andrews' "taint doctrine" had its origins in Zalman's post-Tukayyid reflections on Operation REVIVAL.
• Fantastic Racism: As a Steel Viper trueborn, Andrews hated freeborn.
  "And what did [Phelan Kell] do? Split the Wolf Clan and defected to the Inner Sphere! There is no point in favoring a freebirth, ever!"
• Honest Advisor: Became known as this during his time as Steel Viper saKhan, with his Brutal Honesty and confrontational nature tempering Khan Zalman's more cautious approach.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • By turning the Trial of Reaving into a political tool against 'tainted' clans, he opened his own Clan to being targeted as well (Clan Steel Viper had participated in the Jade Falcon Invasion Corridor). Which indeed, they were once his erstwhile allies had had enough of him.
  • His Loophole Abuse of Clan law saw Clan Steel Viper go from being Reaved to being outright Annihilated.
  • The irony was that since his Clan had invaded and occupied Inner Sphere territory it was the only annihilated clan that did so.
• I Resemble That Remark!: After declaring the Wars of Reaving finished, he was told his own Clan might be tainted and needs to be purged. His response? Challenge the accuser to an unarmed duel of honor, then shoot him between the eyes with a pistol. Of course after that, no one dared object that Brett's Clan is not merely tainted, but is an abomination that cannot be allowed to exist.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His blatant, dishonourable murder of Khan N'Buta right in front of the Grand Council resulted in them all turning on him, with saKhan Banacek literally beating him to death with the Star Adder ceremonial mask while the other Khans just stood by and watched.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Andrews was great at stoking and manipulating the feuds between the Vipers' rival Clans, letting them fight it out, then having Steel Viper forces show up and declare Trials against their now-exhausted opponents. With this, the Vipers soon became the dominant Clan in the Homeworlds until Andrews overplayed his hand at the end of the Wars of Reaving.
• Loophole Abuse: Was very, very good at this.
  • Liberally interpreted the wording behind Reavings to use it as a political tool against his opponents, allowing for Reaved bloodnames to be taken by the winning Clan and thus adding to their genetic material.
  • 'Won' a Trial of Refusal against Diamond Shark saKhan Labov by quietly whispering the ritual words of the Trial and killing his opponent with a throwing knife. Even if technically within the rules, this breach of honour led to the Ghost Bears abandoning the Grand Council alongside the Diamond Sharks.
  • Defined as 'tainted' those Clans "who currently resided in the Inner Sphere", neatly excluding his own Clan who had once possessed their own Occupation Zone there as well. His erstwhile ally, Star Adder Khan Stanislov N'Buta, calls him out on this hypocrisy once the other Invading Clans have all been expelled (see "You Have Outlived Your Usefulness" below).
  • Subverted when Andrews 'won' a Trial of Refusal against Khan N'Buta with a laser blast between the eyes. This breach of honour was more than the surviving Khans would stand for (nevermind that they had already voted to Reave the Steel Vipers), and Andrews quickly found himself beaten to death by Star Adder saKhan Banacek while the other Clans stood aside and watched.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Ironically, in spite of his desire to reinvade the Inner Sphere and undo the shame the Steel Vipers suffered on Tukayyid by conquering Terra, his actions before and during the Wars of Reaving ended up saving the Inner Sphere from both the Clans and the Word of Blake;
  • He forced the other Invader Clans out of Clan space through Trials of Abjuration, effectively exiling and forcing them to resettle within their Inner Sphere Occupation Zones. These exiled Clanners would become valuable allies to the Inner Sphere powers during the Jihad. Notably Clan Ghost Bear, whose anger over Blakist attacks on their civilian castes made them declare a Jihad of their own against the Word Of Blake forces assaulting the Draconis Combine, single-handedly turning that entire front around.
  • If Andrews had been able to unite the Homeworld Clans like Leo Showers did in the 3040s and launch a second Clan Invasion in the early 3070s, the Inner Sphere would have been easy pickings; the Word of Blake's Jihad was in full-swing, the HPG network was in white-out, and many Inner Sphere capital worlds and major industrial centers were in ruins, occupied by the Word, or under siege. Instead, Andrews' obsession with removing Inner Sphere taint and stoking the feuds between Clans triggered a full-blown Enemy Civil War that left the Clan homeworlds completely devastated, and destroyed all but four of the remaining Home Clans, making a new invasion impossible.
• Original Position Fallacy: Andrews called for the removal of the invading Clans because of Inner Sphere "taint". But when he had destroyed his rivals, Khan Stanislov N’Buta of Clan Star Adder reminded him that there was one Clan that had been tainted by its time in the Inner Sphere left: Clan Steel Viper. Cue Andrews shooting him dead with a laser pistol and sealing his doom.
• The Purge: Instituted the Wars of Reaving to rid the Clan Homeworlds of 'taint'. In the end, the Wars of Reaving would reduce the number of Clans in Clan Space from seventeen to four.
• Satanic Archetype: He ended up becoming more loathed by the surviving Clans than Stefan Amaris.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As ilKhan he made up or liberally interpreted a lot of rules in order to justify the Wars of Reaving, and reacted very poorly to anyone attempting to apply them to himself or the Steel Vipers.
• Social Darwinist: An outlier even amongst the Clans, seeing the Wars of Reaving as a means to outright remove the 'weak' Clans. Given how he reacted when directly challenged, he was very much a Straw Meritocrat and a Sore Loser.
• Straw Hypocrite: All his talk and rhetoric about Clan honour and the dangers of Inner Sphere "taint" amounted to nothing when he pulled out a pistol and shot a rival Khan in the head in the Grand Council chamber, rather than fight him hand to hand as the terms of their Trial of Refusal demanded.
• Terrible Trio: The 'Snake Alliance' between Clans Steel Viper, Star Adder and Cloud Cobra was the main power block in the Clan Homeworlds at his ascendance and during the wars he initiated.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He was abandoned by Clan Star Adder, who turned his own words against him to have Steel Viper taken out of the picture, once their mutual enemies had all been decimated.
• Visionary Villain: Downplayed; his own writings present a very strong case for a desire for 'purity', yet his conduct made clear it was equally for material benefits to his Clan and the settling of old blood-feuds.

Clan Hell's Horses

In General

Emblem of Clan Hell's Horses

Clan Hell's Horses has been a second-tier Clan for most of its history, partly due to its resource-poor reliance upon tanks and infantry as much as BattleMechs. While not one of the first Invading Clans, it took a more proactive stance after Tukayyid in trying to join their ranks, and succeeded in claiming their own slice of Spheroid turf. Since the Dark Age era began they've been steadily expanding their territory, and are now on par with most other Clans. Politically they've been split between Crusader and Warden viewpoints, but in general the warriors are less authoritarian than many other Clans.

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• Ascended Extra: When first introduced they were just another Home Clan left behind during the initial invasion. But unlike the other Home Clans the Hell's Horses successfully migrated to the Inner Sphere later on, carving out their own Occupation Zone and avoiding the same disappearance from canon as the remaining Home Clans. In a similar fashion, the Horses weren't really mentioned much early in the Dark Age era, but have since been getting some more time in the limelight.
• Ax-Crazy: Malavai Fletcher, their Khan during the Clan Invasion era, was a fire-breathing Crusader whose aggressiveness caused a lot of setbacks for the Horses before he was deposed.
• Butt-Monkey: The Clan as a whole is often looked down upon by the historically stronger Wolves and Jade Falcons, with Alaric Ward not even giving them the means to join in the battle for Terra (as he did for the Falcons). He later rubs this contempt in their Khans' faces.
  • Khan Gottfried Amirault, specifically. He's derided (not unreasonably) by opponents within his Clan as more politician than warrior, his alliance with Malvina Hazen costs his Clan heavily for little gain, and his grand Operation Stampede not only doesn't gain the Horses Terra and the status of ilClan but fizzles out on a completely different tangent. To top it off, he finally gets killed by his saKhan and the Clan Remembrance - its official history - compares him to Falcon Khan Elias Crichell, another failed Clan politician posing as a warrior.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Averted. Unlike other Clans, who place most of their power into a single form of combat, Hell's Horses believe in proper combined-arms warfare. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making them a Master of None in inter-Clan combat, but when dealing with the relatively under-armed Inner Sphere, this gave them the strength to grab and hold territory while their fellow Clans collapsed and fell back.
• Free the Frogs: The origin of their namesake animal. Clan attempts to genetically engineer horses that could survive on their new world resulted in dangerous, carnivorous beasts. The horses were ordered slaughtered but they were released by a sympathetic soldier.
• Mark of Shame: The Branding ritual sees a group of young, untested Trueborn sent out to capture a Hell's Horse (a carnivorous equine) and give it a brand without seriously harming it. Fail to do so, and... there's no special penalty; it's so ridiculously hard that just trying (and surviving to return) is enough to pass. If any of the warriors actually hurts or kills the Hell's Horse, though, it's seen as a sign of abject failure and an inability to follow orders, and the warrior responsible receives the Mark of Hell tattoo on their forearm.
  • Their alliance with the psychopathic Jade Falcon Khan Malvina Hazen is viewed as a metaphorical one within the Clan.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Whether they're actually heroic depends on one's viewpoint, but the Hell's Horses are one of the more decent Clans - and also the one which aided Malvina Hazen's rise to power and introduced her to the infamous Mongol Doctrine. To be fair, the latter was pioneered as a tactical method decades earlier and only twisted into a "terrorize civilians" style by Hazen herself.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While ruling unquestioned, as in any other Clan, the warriors still behave this way towards the civilian castes and native Spheroid subjects, treating them as valued partners rather than slaves.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the Wars of Reaving, Clan Hell's Horses was split in half. One half became Clan Stone Lion, used by Clan Star Adder as a means of keeping Clan Steel Viper at bay. The other half grew sick of the constant infighting and backstabbing, leaving Clan space entirely and settling in the territory they'd seized during the Clan Invasion. And again when they were press gang into an alliance with Clan Jade Falcon. They were disgusted by the atrocities Khan Malvin had committed, they break off from them as soon as possible.
• Tank Goodness: What they are stereotypicaly known for. Unlike other Clans the Horses value the warrior over any specific machine, and tanks and infantry hold a prominent place in their military. The actual results on the battlefield tend to vary.

The Not-Named Clan

In General

Clan Wolverine Emblem

Era(s): Succession Wars, possibly beyond?

Clan Wolverine, the first Clan subject to the Trial of Annihilation.

The Clan that would be remembered as the Not-Named Clan immediately marked itself during Operation KLONDIKE by suspending Clan operational doctrine in favour of old SLDF tactics if and when it proved more efficient, and repeatedly ignored honour and the Clans' Caste system in favour of pragmatism. Despite making them the most successful of the Clans, even moreso than Clan Wolf, this independent streak put Clan Wolverine on Nicholas Kerensky's bad side. One rivalry with Clan Widomaker, a few bad diplomatic decisions, and one discovery of a cache including nuclear weapons later, Clan Wolverine was attacked by the entirety of Clan society and almost exterminated. What few remnants managed to escape Clan space have disappeared beyond the scope of the setting and have not been seen since.

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• Arch-Enemy: Khan Jason Karrige has an unspecified grudge against Clan Wolverine, and Khan Sarah McEvedy in particular.
• Battle Cry: WOLVERINES! Sometimes done as a call-and-response, with a warrior making a disparaging comment about their opponents, then asking "And what are we?" with "Wolverines!" being the response, frequently broadcast in the clear so the enemy can hear it.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Downplayed. The SLDF had only arrived at the Kerensky cluster less than forty years previously, but the Wolverines broke several WarShips out of mothballs to get their people out of Clan space. Most notably, saKhan Hallis temporarily hijacks the McKenna's Pride and uses it to bombard several Clan halls, presumably just to piss off the other Clans who had wronged them.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Wolverines used SLDF tactics such as combining fire on targets as they presented themselves (called out by saying "pell-mell"), using artillery to flush out enemies, and taking advantage of terrain to defeat their enemies. Nicholas Kerensky was already pushing the Clans deeply into Honor Before Reason, so this tendency put the Wolverines in poor standing with the other Clans.
• False Flag Operation: Khan Jason Karrige has a nuke stolen from the recently-discovered Brian Cache on Wolverine land and smuggled into the Wolverine city of Great Hope. Karrige detonates the nuke as his Widowmakers advance on the city, supervised by Nicholas Kerensky himself, making it look like the Wolverines nuked their own city and hundreds of thousands of their own civilians in an attempt to kill the ilKhan. This cements that the Wolverines will be Annihilated.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: According to Clan history, The Not-Named Clan are complete monsters who ignored the ilKhan's authority and nuked the Snow Raven capitol For the Evulz. The truth is rather a different story.
• Last Stand: The bulk of Clan Wolverine makes one on Barbados, a tropical planet on the Exodus Road where they stopped for rest and resupply, but were cornered by Clan forces. A handful survived by hiding in the jungle, and a few small scout fleets were not present, but for all practical purposes, the Trial of Annihilation against Clan Wolverine concluded on the surface of Barbados.
• National Weapon: Clan Wolverine fielded some of the first new 'Mech designs, and of these the Pulverizer receives the most focus in Betrayal of Ideals, being piloted by both Franklin Hallis and Trish Ebon. After the Annihilation, the other Clans salvaged as many Pulverizers as they could, adding the 'Mech to their own ranks and conveniently forgetting its origin with The Not-Named Clan.
• Noodle Incident: It's never explained why exactly Clan Widowmaker's Khan Karrige has such a grudge against them.
• The Scottish Trope: It's right there in their name. Well, actually, it isn't, but you get the picture. There's such a strong taboo against The Not-Named Clan that even the word "wolverine" in an unrelated context is forbidden. Even what would otherwise be called the Wolverine IIC, a Clan 'Mech clearly based on the chassis and loadout of the Inner Sphere's Wolverine medium 'Mech is known as the Conjurer. Even the Inner Sphere isn't dumb enough to call it the Wolverine IIC, identifying it by the Reporting Name of Hellhound.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once it becomes clear that there's nothing she can do to save her Clan (and that Nicholas is intent on allowing their destruction to cement his vision of and control over the Clans), Sarah initiates Operation Switchback, a plan to get as many Wolverines as possible out of Clan space and back to the Inner Sphere.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: By allowing caste "migration" and other reforms, Clan Wolverine excelled beyond the other Clans in the period of peace after the Pentagon Civil War. They claimed an abundance of food and other resources (which they were willing to barter or share with other, less-fortunate Clans), fielded the first new 'Mech designs (including the venerable Pulverizer), and developed the Enhanced PPC, the precursor to the dreaded Clan ER PPC. This drew the ire of the other Clans, especially Clan Widowmaker.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: As the Trial of Annihilation proceeds, Wolverine warriors cut off from evac points and knowing surrender is not an option focus on hurting their enemies. While they do nothing on the scale of the nuclear attacks they were accused of, they do things well worthy of the label "atrocity."
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Immediately after witnessing the nuking of Great Hope, Nicholas orders Khan Joyce Merrell of Clan Snow Raven to retaliate by dropping a nuke on some troublesome Wolverines hiding in the wilderness. A Wolverine WarShip shoots down the fighter carrying the bomb, which airbursts over the Snow Raven capitol.
• Uncertain Doom: While a huge chunk of Clan Wolverine was successfully Annihilated, an unknown number managed to flee Clan Space. What became of them is unknown, though in-universe speculation is that the "Minnesota Tribe" who raided through Combine space the same year as the Annihilation of Clan Wolverine were Wolverine survivors, and has been confirmed by Word of God. But the Minnesota Tribe likewise vanished from history, leaving the ultimate fate of Clan Wolverine unknown. The novel Betrayal of Ideals includes in its epilogue ComStar's Explorer Corps finding Barbados and a shrine erected around the tombstones of Franklin Hallis and Sarah McEvedy, and evidence the site is visited routinely by those paying respects, indicating something of Clan Wolverine exists at least into the year 3041. The shrine also has a stone arch with the symbols of the other nineteen founding Clans on it, a deep X etched over each, indicating the Wolverines remember what happened to them, and they're not happy about it. Likewise, the short story Redemption and Malice hints that some form of them survived into the Dark Age era, now known as The Clave.

Sarah McEvedy

The first Wolverine Khan

Era(s): Succession Wars

Founder and first Khan of Clan Wolverine.

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• Amazonian Beauty: Andery Kerensky thinks she's one of the most striking women he's ever seen, and her official images give her sharp but very attractive features. And she's one of the most competent warriors in the Founding Clans, being named Khan of Clan Wolverine by Nicholas himself.
• Batman Gambit: Operation Switchback calls for the Wolverine evacuees to jump out of Clan space, but not along the Exodus Road to the Inner Sphere. While Nicholas rallies every Clan and ship he can into a pursuit force, the Wolverines lurk in the uncharted systems, before traveling the Exodus Road behind their pursuers. This fools Nicholas, but only temporarily.
• Depending on the Writer: Fall From Glory describes her as having short brunette hair, while Betrayal of Ideals describes her with short, brilliant blonde hair staring to come in gray.
• Honor Before Reason: Somewhat surprisingly, considering how much the Wolverines in general and she in particular favored pragmatism. Fed up with dealing with the surveillance, manipulations, and Nicholas Kerensky lining them up as the prime target for the other Clans, Sarah drops all the evidence in a Grand Council meeting, including calling out Nicholas to his face on his plans. This unfortunately only served to sour their reputation further. Sarah then announces the Wolverines would secede from the Clans, which means the Wolverines are left without any possible allies and attacked at every turn rather than being able to simply disappear.
• Hope Bringer: If the scarred warrior with the agonized voice (see Uncertain Doom) is indeed Sarah McEvedy, then she is this to the surviving Wolverines.
  (Wolverine Khan Trish Ebon) looked at the woman that had emerged from hiding, and knew that there was indeed hope for the future.
• Made of Iron: Survives a Sniping the Cockpit from a King Crab's AC/20 (something which, under tabletop rules, should be instantly and irrevocably fatal), and not long after being way too close to the nuking of Great Hope, and still doesn't buckle under chemical interrogation. She is even recovering from injuries that should guarantee a slow, agonizing death.
• A Mother to Her Men: Is consistently described as such by the Warriors of Clan Wolverine. For her part, Sarah calls the Clan a family, and no one fights harder to protect it than she.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Sarah was an unfortunate case of being the only one of these in the room. She allows her warriors a great deal of initiative and leeway as long as it produces results, and institutes reforms within her Clan not only because they're effective, but because they make her people happier and more fulfilled. Realizing her Wolverines are being set up for Absorption or worse, she even meets with Nicholas and offers to undo all of her reforms, anything to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. While she makes every possible effort to evacuate all of her Clan when the time comes, she also allows those who refuse to leave with the rest of the Wolverines to walk away. Unfortunately for the Wolverine warriors who sided with the rest of the Clans, Nicholas was in an executing mood.
• Uncertain Doom: She's last seen recuperating from the nuking of Great Hope in the brig of Nicholas Kerensky's flagship, having partly resisted his attempts to interrogate her, her survival known only to Nicholas himself. Nicholas has a tombstone placed for her on Barbados, though both his inner monologue and that of surviving Wolverine Khan Trish Ebon note no grave was dug to accompany it. As she contemplates the tombstone, Trish is spoken to by a scarred female warrior with an agonized voice, who she hugs "as a child would cling to its mother," though in that moment she doubts her sanity and if "the warrior" is really there, but it is a hint that Sarah survived on Barbados, perhaps being marooned there in secret by Nicholas.

Other Clans and Clan-related entities

General Tropes of Minor Clans

The Clans originally started out as twenty, though three were extinguished before re-contact with the Inner Sphere, and of the seventeen left only four (later expanded to seven) Clans had a major role in the invasion of the Inner Sphere^note the original Invader Clans in Battletech supplements were Clans Wolf, Jade Falcon, Ghost Bear, Smoke Jaguar, Nova Cat, Steel Viper, and Diamond Shark. The ten remaining Clans were left in the Kerensky Cluster and played a significantly lesser role in Inner Sphere politics until after the Refusal War and the Second Star League era, as more and more of them began moving into the Inner Sphere and those who remained behind began preying on each other. Whether minor or major, each Clan has its own unique culture, attitudes, and history.

Here are general tropes associated with the minor Clans.

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• Action Politician: While all Clans are led by the Warrior castes, Cloud Cobra and Snow Raven are particularly well known for being politically savvy.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: The Seekers of Clan Goliath Scorpion combine this with Knight Errant and Vision Quest. They travel the galaxy seeking lost Star League artifacts and fighting Trials of Possession against other Clans for those artifacts.
• Ambadassador: Clan Blood Spirit, in its early days. They would send "ilChi" ambassadors to other Clans to promote cooperation. Their first Khan, Colleen Schmidt, was skilled at reconciling differences between different Clans. However, the treatment of Clan Wolverine caused Clan Blood Spirit to withdraw the ilChi and become isolationist.
• Blood Knight: Clan Goliath Scorpion, in its new form as the Scorpion Empire, really hates Space Pirates. They brutally kill any pirates they encounter in ways that shock even the other Clans, unless they need the pirates for interrogation. Observers from Clan Sea Fox have noted how many pirates in the Periphery have bolted for the Inner Sphere to try and get as far away from the Scorpions as possible.
• Broken Pedestal: Betrayal of Ideals implies that Clan Blood Spirit was hit by this in seeing how the other Clans treated the Wolverines, and that their insular nature was caused by seeing the other Clans as hypocrites unwilling to live up to the standards they had set for themselves.
• Category Traitor: The entirety of Clan Nova Cat were branded as such by joining up with Star League, and all but lost their 'Clan' status as a result. They were the first Clan to be Abjured from Clan space entirely, and came close to being Annihilated. Clan Ghost Bear (their Inner Sphere neighbours) refused to honour zellbrigen towards them for years and engaged the Nova Cats in all-out warfare.
• Church Militant: Clan Cloud Cobra's first Khan was a military chaplain and its Warrior caste is trained in religion and theology.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Clan Diamond Shark is the most liberal Clan when it comes to obeying zellbrigen, and can outright suspend it when it comes to purely internal affairs. Against other Clans the Diamond Sharks also interpret duels as liberally as possible if they think they can get away with it and — thanks to their domination of Chatterweb — are expert bidders when it comes to batchalls.
  • Clan Snow Raven is known for its opportunistic nature and will ignore both zellbrigen and most other taboos if things get desperate. They attempted to defeat the Wolverines with a pre-emptive nuclear attack during the Annihilation, an act that would be unthinkable to the later Clans.
  • Pragmatism is the defining feature of Clan Star Adder. While individual Adder warriors are considered conservative and strictly follow zellbrigen to the letter, the Clan at a whole is focused on removing all distractions — internal and external — that impedes their warmaking ability. The Adders fight with long-term strategic goals in mind and avoid political entanglements, with internal rivalries and grudges being quickly settled to keep them from distracting the Clan. They were the only other clan besides Clan Wolf that held wargames and made a proper invasion plan against the Inner Sphere, obtaining a realistic assessment of the Clan Invasion on a strategic level. Additionally, their victory in the Great Refusal involved an ambush similar to ones the Inner Sphere had used against the Clans on Wolcott and Tukayyid.
• Cult of Personality: Clan Star Adder is noted for their defiance of this trope in regards to the Kerenskys. They respect Aleksandr and Nicholas Kerensky as great leaders but avoid the quasi-deification that other Clans give them, and mostly ignored the Hidden Hope Doctrine. Ironically, a Star Adder khan (Bacanek) would end up becoming almost as deified as the Kerenskys were after the Wars of Reaving and his writings are held as almost sacred to the Bastion and Aggressor Clans (they simply disagree on how to interpret them).
• Culture Chop Suey: All Battletech factions are this to some extent, but Clan Goliath Scorpion is this even by in-universe standards.
  • They integrated the Inner Sphere Eridani Light Horse mercenary unit into their Clan and gene pool, which disgusted the other Clans.
  • After the Scorpions were Abjured, they conquered the Umayyad Caliphate, Nueva Castile, and the Hanseatic League to form the Scorpion Empire. To integrate their different populations, they altered Clan traditions in ways that made their integration of the Eridani Light Horse look mild. The Clan Council has representatives from all the different castes, not just the Warriors. Membership in the Warrior caste is open to anyone regardless of birth, although they have to compete in Trials of Position to prove their skills. Every caste also has its own limited internal democracy in addition to its own Clan Council representative.
• Cynicism Catalyst: The Annihilation of Clan Wolverine was this for all of Clan Blood Spirit. They went from a Clan dedicated to diplomacy and strengthening ties between Clans to bitter isolationists. Their first Khan, Colleen Schmidt, went from a Wide-Eyed Idealist to screaming a barrage of insults as she made her Last Stand against Clan Burrock.
• The Dead Have Names: Every Galaxy and Cluster of Clan Cloud Cobra maintains an Honorarium, which is a garden that memorializes every person dies fighting for or against the Clan. For every life lost, Cloud Cobras plant a new life. These gardens surround the Cobras' Hall of Khans on Strana Mechty and take up several square kilometers.
• Defector from Decadence: The first Khan of Clan Nova Cat and the first Khan and saKhan of Clan Burrock were natives of and soldiers in the military of the Rim Worlds Republic, and either surrendered to Aleksander Kerensky in person (Philip Drummond of Clan Nova Cat) or joined the SLDF after the war but before the Exodus (Nigel and Herve Polczyk of Clan Burrock) after they grew disillusioned with Amaris's politics or realized that he had abandoned them after taking over the Star League.
• Didn't Think This Through: Clan Ice Hellion is infamous for acting on their first impulses without thinking about the consequences or possible alternatives. They often put their feet in it as a result, and are one of the least powerful Clans. The other Clans don't respect them, considering the Hellions a bunch of short-tempered fools.
• Fragile Speedster: Clan Ice Hellion favors aerospace fighters and light, fast Mechs. This emphasis on speed pervades their culture as well, preferring quick thinking and impulsiveness. This can be advantageous in battle but less so in politics or business.
• The Fundamentalist: Every Clan to some degree views itself as the only true followers of Kerensky's vision. Whether they view the other Clans as evil heretics or merely misguided varies from Clan to Clan.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Clan Goliath Scorpion once used the venom of its namesake animal to induce Vision Quests. However, since this was often lethal, they invented necrosia, a chemical derived from the venom to induce a similar state without its deadly effects.
• Foil:
  • In terms of strategy, Clan Ice Hellion and it's focus on Attack! Attack! Attack! caused them to become Too Dumb to Live. Their invasion of the Inner Sphere and attack on other Clans failed so badly they were wiped out.
  • Clan Star Adder is the Combat Pragmatist of the Clans. They knew that a campaign to retake the Inner Sphere would be a long slog and require a large force. They lost a place in Operation REVIVAL due to providing a large bid that was seen as comically large to the other Clans. They were Vindicated by History at the Battle of Tukayyid.
• I Shall Taunt You: Ice Hellions are famous for tough talk. Other Clans, especially Wolf, love goading them into this.
• Interfaith Smoothie: Clan Cloud Cobra's religion, the Way, is made up of several Cloisters based on various Earth religions. Even members of other Clans are allowed to join. Their first Khan was a SLDF military chaplain who was focused on smoothing over cultural and religious differences among his troops.
• Ironic Name: Zig-Zagged. Clan Blood Spirit, named for esprit de corps, is the most xenophobic and isolationist of the Clans. However, they strongly promote this spirit within their Clan, with members of all castes getting some combat training alongside Warriors.
• Knight Errant: The Seekers of Clan Goliath Scorpion, independent nomadic warriors often on a Vision Quest.
• Magical Native American: Clan Coyote's first Khan was a Native American and her culture influenced its various mystical and religious rituals.
• Meaningful Rename: Clan Sea Fox/Diamond Shark, when their original totem animal was driven to extinction by genetically engineered sharks created by their Clan Snow Raven rivals they adopted the sharks as their new totem. But they managed to save a few sea foxes and covertly bred them in captivity until their migration to the Inner Sphere, changing the clan name back after releasing them into the wild on multiple planets.
• No True Scotsman - The Clans tend to throw this around a lot when dissing each other. Clans that defected to the Inner Sphere or were abjured are seen as unclanlike by the homeworld clans and vice-versa. Clan Blood Spirit armed their lower castes and were destroyed for this as this was seen as "unclanlike". Brett Andrews took this up to eleven, annihilating pretty much any Clan that didn't live up to his specific, exacting standards of what a "true" Clan was supposed to be or just threatened his power. The fact that these often overlapped is purely coincidental.
• Old Soldier: Clan Nova Cat's first Khan was also its third Khan, who came out of retirement (and therapy for a degenerative disease that had forced his retirement) and fought his way back into the Warrior caste and to the position of Khan in his seventies. He would eventually die at a hundred and twenty as the last of the original generation of Khans.
• Proud Merchant Race: All Clans have a Merchant caste but Clan Sea Fox/Diamond Shark fit this trope better than all the others. It is common for older Warriors to retire and join the Merchant caste. They lean toward the Warden philosophy but supported the Crusader clans as they thought the invasion would open up new opportunities for business in the Inner Sphere.
• Proud Scholar Race: Clan Coyote, whose Scientist Caste was the largest and most influential, and who prized innovation and development of new technology, having developed the OmniMech and many of the Clans' weapon innovations. As a result, they were by far the Clan most affected by The Society, which took practical control over the Clan during the Wars of Reaving. Brett Andrews responded by having its entire Scientist Caste purged, leaving Clan Coyote permanently crippled.
• Refuge in Audacity: Clan Sea Fox (formerly Diamond Shark) wants to open trade with the Spheroids. So, how how do you make customers out of people that haven’t forgotten the time you tried to conquer them? Why, you appropriate their informal names for Clan 'Mechs and use them as official labels for your products to capitalize on brand recognition!
• Shadow Archetype: Clan Fire Mandrill split itself into "Kindraas" (kindred associations), dividing the Clan into smaller groups that fought amongst themselves more than the other clans. This mirrored the way the Clans fought amongst themselves during their years of exile from the Inner Sphere. Their only contribution to clan tech was an improved flamer - this while other clans increased their technology across the board. The clan was destroyed piecemeal by the Society and other clans during the Wars of Reaving.
• Small, Secluded World: Clan Blood Spirit is the most insular of the Clans (ironic, given their nickname), hold the least territory of all the Clans, and refuse to ally or interact with anyone beyond a token effort at being present during Great Council politics.
• Snake Versus Mongoose: Clan Mongoose's greatest enemy is Clan Star Adder after the former massacred several of the latter's civilians.
• Space Nomads: Clan Sea Fox largely resides on ArkShips in the Inner Sphere following the Wars of Reaving. Though they maintain trade enclaves on some worlds.
• Super Serum: Used by some members of Clan Ice Hellion, on the saKhan's orders. Others viewed this as an insult to Clan eugenics and resulted in a destructive civil war within the Clan.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Clan Fire Mandrill is split into several factions that often fight amongst themselves. The only thing holding them together is the knowledge that none of these factions could take on another Clan on their own.
• Throwing the Fight: Clan Nova Cat chose to join the new Star League Defense Force. So they could switch sides without loss of honor, they set up a series of mock battles so that they could lose and join the SLDF as abtakha^note Warriors who are captured by another Clan and then join that Clan warriors. They did so by giving Inner Sphere "attackers" a script to follow: positing that logically, against any force composed of equally-skilled and equally-equipped warriors, the actual outcome of any battle would logically be decided by chance, thus one could decide a battle without fighting by a coin toss. The Nova Cat forces call "edge," and thus lose.
• Vision Quest: Clans Coyote, Nova Cat, and Goliath Scorpion make use of this.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Clan Blood Spirit is the only Clan not named after an animal. Their rivals, Clan Burrock, would create a genetically modified white vampire bat and name it the Blood Spirit as an insult. Clan Star Adder, who absorbed Clan Burrock, would create a BattleMech named the Blood Asp for similar reasons.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Clan Fire Mandrill divides itself into several smaller sub-Clans called kindraa, based on alliances between Bloodname houses. The Mandrills spend more time fighting each other than their rival Clans, though their warriors are known for their ferocity when challenged by outsiders.

The Watch

The Watch is the catch-all term for the Clans' united intelligence gathering efforts. Created at the dawn of the Political Century as the Clans began planning for a return to the Inner Sphere, the first Clan-wide intelligence agency, then called Intelser, which was founded with the sole mandate of gathering information on the Inner Sphere in order to prepare for the Clan Invasion. As planning turned to concrete invasion, Intelser was replaced and superceded by The Watch, an entity that answered to ilKhan Leo Showers and would represent a unified intelligence-sharing effort on the invasion, providing info on what worlds were being taken, who their defenders were, and what the outcomes of the battles were.

As can be expected from a culture with a two-hundred year old history of openly declaring your objectives and the disposition of forces to the enemy before the campaign even starts, the Watch was not exactly the creme de la creme of intelligence gathering efforts. While intended to be a unified entity, in practice each Invading Clan created their own Watch, answerable only to their own Clan, and shared what information they could get freely due to the Clans' inherent distaste for information warfare and subterfuge. After the death of Leo Showers and the Battle of Tukayyid, the Watch essentially fragmented entirely into its Clan-specific components, with some Clans quickly learning from their mistakes and upping their game until they could provide at least a partially competent intelligence agency, while others (especially the Home Clans, who had little use for it when fighting other Clan opponents) simply let theirs wither on the wine.

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• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Watch recruited from lower castes, particularly Technicians and Merchants, as well as washouts from the Warrior Caste.
• Clueless Detective: The Clans are a Proud Warrior Race that frown on covert operations so the Watch is incompetent compared to their opposite numbers in the Inner Sphere.
• Had to Be Sharp: Clans occupying the Inner Sphere improved their Watch branches to offset their Combat Pragmatist neighbors. The Watch branches of the Homeworld Clans tended to stagnate.
• Jurisdiction Friction: The Watch theoretically serves all the Clans but every Clan has their own branch, with all the typical inter-Clan bickering.
• Learned from the News: The idea of infiltrating or spying on an opponent is alien to the Clans, so during the Invasion most Watch agents gathered what information they could from what was publically available on each planet's infosphere (essentially, they looked up public records) — needless to say, the Inner Sphere quickly caught on to that particular weakness.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Many Watch agents are washouts from the Warrior caste.
• Secret Police: The Watch is supposed to be this, as well as gathering military intelligence. Because the Clans are quite paranoid and rigorously self-police its members about how closely they follow the Honour Road anyway, the Watch is usually redundant at the former, and incompetent at the latter.

Dark Caste/Bandit Caste

The criminal underworld of the Clans.

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• Enemy Mine: They provide a common enemy for the often-bickering Clans. Their atrocities are often exaggerated though they're never more than a nuisance.
• Friend in the Black Market: To all of Clan society to some extent, but especially Clan Burrock. When this relationship was exposed, Clan Burrock was Absorbed into Clan Star Adder.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Many of them are former members of the Warrior caste who desert, wash out, or want to avoid joining a solahma unit^note A unit for soldiers who reach old age without gaining an honorable death, a Bloodname, or a high rank
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: They're often used as practice enemies for training Clan warriors.
• Mad Scientist: Many of them are former members of the Scientist caste whose discoveries were considered counterproductive to Clan society.
• Wretched Hive: They have several settlements throughout Clan space. One of their most popular havens is the Tanis system, a four-world system nominally ruled by Clan Cloud Cobra but so isolated that rebel and criminal elements thrive.

Free Guilds

Members of the Scientist, Technician, Merchant, and Labor castes who serve no one Clan and instead serve all of Clan society.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: They are looked down on by those who are part of a proper Clan, even the lowest castes. They are often given the worst jobs like sewer maintenance and environmental hazard management.
• Friend in the Black Market: After the Clan Invasion, Clan Jade Falcon forced captured members of the Malthus crime syndicate (distantly related to the Malthus Bloodname) to serve the Free Guilds, intending they be worked to death. Instead, the Free Guilds and the Malthus Syndicate worked together to smuggle goods into and out of Clan occupation zones. Several Syndicate members gained leadership roles in the Guilds and they became the Malthus Confederation.
• Theme Naming: In contrast to the Clans' Animal Theme Naming, the Guilds take their names from plants or other natural objects.
  • Floral Theme Naming: Several of them have plant-based names such as Black Rose, Blue Narcissus, Crimson Hellebore, Golden Snapdragon, Gray Lotus, and Red Willows.
  • Stellar Name: Others have sky or star-related names such as Blue Horizon, Green Winds, Indigo Summit, Orange Wind, and Yellow Sun.

The Society

A secret cabal of Clan scientists led by Etienne Balzac who seek to overthrow the Warrior caste.

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• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Society gets its muscle from the Dark Caste, Warrior caste washouts, and the lower castes.
• Clone Army: They produced a sibko of clones based on Jade Falcon warrior Aidan Pryde.
• Combat Pragmatist: They lack the size and combat training of the Warrior caste, so they use dishonorable tactics such as espionage, biological weapons, and computer viruses.
• The Dog Bites Back: It's unclear how long exactly the Society was around and preparing for their eventual overthrow of the warrior caste, but the last straw for them was the Wars of Reaving, where the warrior caste trueborns mass-murdering one another and destroying the scientist caste's hard work forced them to step into the light.
• Emperor Scientist: Members of the Scientist caste who wish to abolish rule by the Warrior caste and take over.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Several members of the Society are former members of the Warrior caste who washed out and got reassigned to the Scientist caste. Their leader Etienne Balzac is one of them.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: One of the Society's "crimes" was combining genetic legacies across Clan lines.
• Mad Scientist: While the Warriors mostly wanted them to focus on weapons development and genetic research, members of the Society had more of an For Science! attitude. Conducting research in secret, often across Clan lines and using human test subjects, they finally took advantage of the upheaval caused by the Invader Clans departing Clan space permanently and the beginning of the Wars of Reaving to try to take over.
• Meaningful Name: During their rebellion, they would proclaim their 'Mech configurations as the ultimate or final versions by designating them "Configuration Z". Packed to the gills with the bleeding edge of Clantech weaponry, Z types were extremely powerful but often let down by their Mechwarrior's inexperience.
• Proud Scholar Race: Clan Coyote is this so the Society was born out of their Scientist caste.
• The Purge: Several Clans did this to their Scientist castes after discovering the Society, resulting in the stagnation of their scientific progress.
• Villain Has a Point: They're right about the Warrior caste's disproportionate power in Clan society.

Genecaste

An offshoot of Clan society that takes their eugenics program to a terrifying extreme to adapt to worlds no normal human could survive. Some are so heavily modified that they could no longer survive in a normal human environment.

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• Artificial Animal People: Many of them are basically this.
• Everyone Has Standards: Their extreme levels of genetic modification is considered as too far even by the Clans, who created the Elementals and modify their trueborn freely.
• Fantastic Caste System:
  • Altforms/Genenorms: The lowest outsiders of the society. Those whose mutations make them inferior or those who are not altered at all.
  • Firstform: Appear to be normal humans. All genetic modifications are beneath the skin. Used to infiltrate and work with normal human society.
  • Secondform: Some deviations from normal human appearance, such as pointed ears or webbed fingers.
  • Thirdform: People with radical differences.
  • Fourthform and Fifthform: The true power in the Genecaste, though no outsider has ever seen them.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Clan genetic engineering turned them into monsters.
• Heavyworlder: Some members of the Genecaste are this
• Lightworlder: Some members of the Genecaste are adapted to worlds with lighter gravity and could not survive on a world with normal gravity.
• Unperson: They are never spoken of in Clan society.
• Unreliable Narrator: The only information about them comes from a book that's functionally an in-universe tabloid, meaning that it's an open question as to what, if any, of the things it says about them are actually true or if they even exist in the first place.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The sheer level of difference between the residents of some of their colonies means that they're hardly a united front. They manage to keep a minor level of contact in the name of survival, sharing resources and information to stay alive and keep from being exterminated by the Clans.

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