Clans (BattleTech)

The Clans are a species that feature in BattleTech.

History

The Clans were a warrior-based civilization founded by the self-exiled remnants of the Star League Defense Force, who were led by their founder General Aleksandr Kerensky into the Deep Periphery to flee the collapse of the Star League. The Star League was described as an utopian civilization spanning thousands of human-colonized star systems that dissolved as a result of the assassination of its hereditary ruler, First Lord Richard Cameron, and a subsequent coup d'état. The resulting war left the military arm of the Star League, the Star League Defense Force ("SLDF"), caught between the various noble houses of the Inner Sphere vying for control of the disintegrated Star League. Instead of participating in these conflicts, SLDF General Aleksandr Kerensky chose to depart from the Inner Sphere and known space in year 2784 of the BattleTech timeline, leading most of the Star League Defense Force and their families beyond the borders of the Periphery The long journey of Kerensky and his followers is termed "the Exodus" and ends with the discovery of five marginally habitable worlds depicted as being located deep within the Milky Way galaxy, termed "the Pentagon Worlds". However, the former-SLDF quickly found itself ill-suited to the task of colonization. With too many soldiers and too few support personnel, General Kerensky decided to discharge most of his military personnel from service. In order to determine who would be discharged and who would remain under arms, General Kerensky set up a series of challenges and war-games. The top performers were kept on as professional military personnel and the rest were discharged as civilians.

Nevertheless, the society of the Pentagon Worlds is depicted as falling prey to the same infighting that had torn apart the Star League, forcing Aleksandr's son Nicholas Kerensky to conduct a "Second Exodus" in 2801 to a nearby star cluster with a handful of military personnel and dedicated followers. Nicholas' followers eventually settled on a planet that his mother, Katya Kerensky, named Strana Mechty (described in-universe as Russian for "Land of Dreams"). Nicholas is depicted as having used this planet as a base to build up an invasion force to retake the Pentagon Worlds and, in so doing, completely rebuilt his followers' society to create "the Clans". The actual formation of the Clans is described as resulting from the distribution of 800 warriors still loyal to the Kerenskys and 600 civilian families evenly among 20 newly founded Clans. Notably, Nicholas is described as instituting a eugenics program, whereby each warrior became the progenitor of a "bloodname" and "bloodline", thereby contributing his or her genes to a Clan-wide artificial breeding program. The products of this system form the backbone of the Clan military. Additionally, the Clans are depicted as having developed a caste-system with these genetically-enhanced soldiers placed at the top, and beneath them various scientist, merchant, technician and laborer castes. In the BattleTech lore, Nicholas spent years training his warriors and then returned to the Pentagon Worlds with his Clans and retook them from their inhabitants, who in that time had been reduced to banditry, cultism, and savagery. After the successful reconquest of the Pentagon Worlds in 2822, known as Operation Klondike, they once again formed the core of the Clan Homeworlds, but Strana Mechty remained the capital planet.

Over the next two centuries following the Exodus era (2784-2822), the Clans are described as gradually increasing in strength, colonizing new worlds, and developing new technologies. Clan history after this point generally divides into two eras, each lasting roughly a century: the "Golden Century" from 2822 to 2947, when Clan colonization, industrialization, and technological innovation grew by leaps and bounds, and the "Political Century" from 2947 to 3049, by which time the Clans had colonized the Kerensky Cluster to its saturation point and they began to heavily compete with each other over the limited resources of the area. Their environment of the Clan Homeworlds was and remains a harsh one. The "Kerensky Cluster", which formed the core of their space, is many jumps worth of jump drive travel from the Inner Sphere, and is represented as being totally cut off from it. The borders of the Inner Sphere (the former maximum extent of the old Star League) are roughly a 500 light-year radius around Terra, yet the Kerensky Cluster is stated to be 1300 light years distant from Terra (thus 800 light years away from the borders of known space). Even the ships of the original Exodus, using peak Star League technology, took over a year to travel between the Inner Sphere and what would become the Clan Homeworlds.

Depicted as a means to reduce collateral damage to their fragile and limited infrastructure, soon after their founding the Clans developed rules of ritualized combat and warfare to avoid damaging vital resources and harming civilians. These rules are a key feature of BattleTech lore. The most important aspect of Clan combat doctrine is that they prefer to fight one-on-one duels, and actually disdain attacking numerically inferior enemies as dishonorable. Indeed, important political debates within the Clans are often settled by formal duels between two champions. Political conflicts which in the Inner Sphere would be settled with open warfare are typically decided among the Clans by selecting two champions to represent each army, like two knights serving as champions on an ancient battlefield. During the Political century leading up to the first Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere in 3049, a great debate arose within the Clans about how to approach their conquests. The faction known as Crusaders felt that they should conquer the constantly squabbling Inner Sphere for the good of the Clans, while the faction known as Wardens wanted to uphold Kerensky's original vision of conquering the Successor States of the Inner Sphere so that they might reunify them, for the good of all humanity, into a new Star League. These were not two rival groups of Clans, however, as a single Clan might be internally divided between Crusaders and Wardens. Certain Clans, however, were noted as heavily skewing towards one or the other, such as the Crusader-dominated Jade Falcons and the Warden-dominated Wolves.

Members

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Appearances

• BattleTech:

External Link

• Mech Wiki Entry

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