359 replies to this topic

[Hunson Abadeer]

Jaroth Winson, on 18 July 2012 - 01:34 AM, said:

Incorrect. The Khans are chosen by a vote. They in turn form the Grand Council who also vote on things. You do not have to be a great warrior to be elected, but a good politician.

In fairness, "Clan Councils comprise all of a Clan's Bloodnamed warriors," and each "Clan Council elects two of its number as Khans" (Warriors of Kerensky, pp. 54-55). It is true that "the best politicians tend to get elected" (Ibid., 55), but the Clans are still selecting the "best politicians" from among a group born and bred as warriors that prove their worth through violence, not intellectual merit or governance.

[Linde]

I think the clans lost because they wanted to fight their "fair" war. Also they lost because every had to many enemies (even within the clans). The Inner sphere wanted and needed to win, no matter how. After the surprise was over and the forces of the Inner spere were not crushed it was only a matter of time.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Stormwolf, on 18 July 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

To expand on this, many things in Clan life are put to a vote and many ideas can be advocated and discussed. The most important aspect here is "what is best for the Clan". A Khan can't simply do what he or she wants if it goes against the good of the Clan, there have been instances where the SaKhan killed the Khan for this.

Let's be clear, however, as most instances of voting only allow the warrior caste to vote. For example, it was strange that Khan Damon Clarke allowed non-warriors to vote on the name change from Sea Fox to Diamond Shark (Invading Clans, 135-136). Broadly speaking, the Clans are oligarchies governed by brutes that retain power at least partially through implied threat of force. The lower castes are seen as lesser beings, and their lives are controlled for the good of the whole through means such as mandatory marriages (Warriors of Kerensky, 36).

Edited by Hunson Abadeer, 18 July 2012 - 07:15 AM.

[JFlash49]

outnumbered mostly. but i got to hand it to them, it was a pretty good fight.

[Hawk819]

Look to history, and you'll see your answer.

Napoleon thought he could conquer the Russias, he gambled and lost his whole army of over 200k + troops to the Russian winter. Tsar Nicholas knew that Winter was onset and he drew Napoleon in. Even though, he conquered Moscow, he found it burnt and desolate and not so very useful. The Clans had this very same problem. The further they went along in the Inner Sphere the more thinned out they became cause of their doctrine on Warfare. Example, say you and me are faced off for the planet Russ. You're the Clan Commander, and you start bidding away your key elements in the fighting force.

That bidding practice is what got them in the most trouble. Teddy boy used this against them, and to great affect on Wolcott and won it as a staging ground to attack the Smoke Jags and Nova Cats at his leisure. Secondly, though they had superior technology and weapons, it did not assure victory. If one will notice that majority of the battles were fought in closed spaces, negating any advantage the Clans had. Grayson Death Carlyle learned this the first time with his entanglement with the Falcons, even though he got his *** whipped by the first time, he used the knowledge from that engagement to whipped theirs in the second battle (read about Gray Death Legion, Harry).

Thirdly, the further they went along and deep they went, the Clans started to face better equipped units. Units they faced previous weren't as good and suffered for where they were placed. Hell, they face nothing but pirates and would be mercenaries,and nothing along the lines of the clans. So, yes. . . the Clans overwhelmed. For a time. Think back to Victor. Remember him? The Clans wanted his sweet Prince bottom. On three separate occasions, they nearly had him. but he learned from his encounters with them and became a much stronger leader because of it.

To answer your questions:

1. Paradise Syndrome
2. To rigid in their tactics.
3. They kept to the idea that they were superior, everything the Inner Sphere had was inferior. Hence, arrogance. Think back to the third novel. Where Ulric Kerensky told everyone in the room what happened in the grand council. The damned fools started to bid away their forces to gain a landing zone. And look what happened at Tukkayid. The Bears got one of their objectives, the Wolves won both of theirs, but the rest, got their ***** kicked cause they didn't listen to Ulric. He told them to change their tactics, hell, he even warn them but they did the worst kind of folly, they didn't listen.

[CJF Ronin]

Well the fall of the clans is equal to the fall of the Samurai. Honor among our clans is very important but can also get you killed. Yes you can say the battle of Tukayyid stopped the clans for a bit but it was how clans were set up. If all the clans attacked the IS at once it would have been over. As you know only the strongest clans where allowed to invade the crusader clans. Not all the clans believed in invading the IS. The ghost bears controled many of the IS planets but then sided with the IS and helped them. Then came the infighting among our clans, the biggest being Falcons vs wolves. Of course my clan the Jade Falcons won but all were weakened.
As was stated before by others Comstar held on to the lost tech that only the Clan had knowledge of, and even had Warships, and mechs equal to that of the clans to a point. They threw these into the mix after the clans invaded. Our honor got in the way when it came to battles and invasion. If all the clans united under one banner, which of course was a Jaguar banner at the time, we could have one. To much honor on the field of battle. The IS won because they did things that honor bound warriors would not do. Also the fact that the IS breeds like rabbits and were able to fill mechs unlike clans who created Trueborns and most clans would not allow freeborns to pilot. We Jade Falcons did but the lesser clans were against it.
Last was the houses united and elected a Starlord showing the clans that the IS was as one again. Which was the whole reason for the invasion, then of course the new star league attacked and whiped out the jags.
The Falcon will soon sore again soon Quiaff

CJF Ronin
Clan Jade Falcon
http://www.jadefalconclan.com/main/

[Buda]

Imagine something like this...

AT&T, or Verizon, or some huge telecommunicacion company with lots of funds and stuff. Worried that their clients won't pay their bills, they start bulding an army to motivate their clients to pay. Due to near unlimited funds, they got an army so big an awesome that its practically a power by itself. Instead on running in some mad kind of world-domination plan, they keep their pristine army stored in case of some sort of mayhem unleashes. Clients pays, btw....

After a couple of centuries, some steroid-feeded bullies arrived from an nearly 300 years dull-minded boy-scout camp, believing some weird nietzsche-nish stuff. They start fighting against every poor fellow they could find on a so called "crusade" to liberate mankind of corruption and bring democracy... errr... some kind of warlike based society (BTW: my respects to warden clans... props to them!).

While all of this happened, the guys from this huge telecommunication company, watching Family guy or some other funny cartoon, where shocked when breaking news apeared, They decided to lend a hand. They took their pristine army, decided an place and day for a all-in duel (that place is called Tukkayid) to stop those bullies. The bullies were a**-kicked and left the neighbourhood in shame an disgrace. Then, the bullies start bulling them self and, well, the rest is "history", or "future", if you know what I mean...

[Hunson Abadeer]

CJF Ronin, on 18 July 2012 - 07:54 AM, said:

Well the fall of the clans is equal to the fall of the Samurai.

The comparison between the Clans and samurai is fairly apt. The samurai during the Sengoku-jidai were actual soldiers, and the bushido philosophy developed over time. Once the Tokugawa came to power, the samurai no longer had endless wars to keep them busy, and all of the land and power shifted upwards. They became a highly ritualistic and elitist class that became tainted by those that brutalized and abused the lower classes. Many of the samurai became foppish aristocrats rather than soldiers. The same thing also occurred in Europe once the nobility no longer had a reason to put on their armour and mount their horses to settle disputes.

The Clanners are the late-term, ritualistic fops. They are quite boastful and arrogant, and they do so love to look down on others. In the end, however, they are not soldiers despite their shiny armour and weapons, and their ritualism serves to make them feel superior while not translating into actual warfare. A fop that spends all of his/her time practicing for duels will be excellent at duels, but that does not mean that they will excel in full-blown war, which is much dirtier and grittier than the ritualistic nonsense the fop is used to.

Look at Olympic fencing. Two people line up and flick their floppy sticks at each other, and it simply comes down to who hits first within the designated area. In most matches, both people would actually be dead had it been a real sword fight. Take an army of fencers, arm them with real swords, and send them against an army of actual soldiers. The result would most likely be a bloodbath with the surviving fencers limping away, whining about all of the biting, clawing, kicking, and whatnot that just was not "fair."

[Monsoon]

Riffleman, on 01 July 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:

To those who know the lore, how did this work. How did the inner sphere manage to hold on? Did they outnumber the clans in general? The clans had huge advantages:

1. Suprise. Struck hard and fast before the inner sphere even knew of their existance.

2. suposedly superior troops. Bred to wage war, with superior genes.

3. Far more advanced technology. Everything that the clans had was superior to the inner sphere version, and had technologies lost to them.

So how exactly did they survive that first war?

1. Surpirse bogs down when the travel time between systems takes weeks if not over a month.

2. Eugenics is a crock. Unless we're taking Genetic splicing, like in Star Trek.

3. Negated by their committing continually smaller forces, to 'prove' their superiority.

[Karyudo ds]

Hunson Abadeer, on 18 July 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

The Clanners are the late-term, ritualistic fops. They are quite boastful and arrogant, and they do so love to look down on others. In the end, however, they are not soldiers despite their shiny armour and weapons, and their ritualism serves to make them feel superior while not translating into actual warfare.

That seems about right and yet makes no sense at all. You leave a society because of it's wars. You come up with a better way to solve disputes. Then your society decides to use that on the "barbaric" society it left and for some reason actually expects to win given the historical evidence to the contrary. Looks like nothing could go wrong there!

It doesn't make much sense to me how one could be so extremely ignorant of history on such a grand scale like that. Though there are a few other major plot points in Battletech that also made me sigh so it sort of fits right in. I mean wasn't taking Earth their goal? What kind of goal is that? In a universe that big Earth was simply "where we came from", not "the one ring planet to rule them all". If they made it there the fighting certainly wouldn't have stopped, not because of Earth but because everyone wanted their crap back period.

Of course I'm not sure I really get the point of invading a succession war to prove the idiots fighting it that they're wrong. I suppose that's why the Wardens existed. Still, they were led out of the Inner Sphere by a General of all people and came back with the worst concept of warfare ever conceived. You simply can't expect your opponent to ever fight the way you do. Suppose they were simply a historical caricature in a way.

[Thorn Hallis]

I guess in the Clans way of thinking, capturing Terra would have been seen as such a big thing that each and every human in the Successor States would have accepted that the Clans are superior and would have adopted the Clan-way of life because of that.

[Stormwolf]

Hunson Abadeer, on 18 July 2012 - 07:14 AM, said:

Let's be clear, however, as most instances of voting only allow the warrior caste to vote. For example, it was strange that Khan Damon Clarke allowed non-warriors to vote on the name change from Sea Fox to Diamond Shark (Invading Clans, 135-136). Broadly speaking, the Clans are oligarchies governed by brutes that retain power at least partially through implied threat of force. The lower castes are seen as lesser beings, and their lives are controlled for the good of the whole through means such as mandatory marriages (Warriors of Kerensky, 36).

Your view of the Clan council seems to stem mostly from the Clan Smoke Jaguar way of doing things.
It is correct that only the Warrior caste can vote, but members of other castes are allowed before the council when there are problems the warriors can solve or need to approve.

Clans like Wolf and Jade Falcon tend to pay attention to their lower casts because they know that the entire Clan will suffer if one caste is underperforming. This help can range from freeing up more jumpships for the Merchant caste to challenging a enemy Clan for resources because the workers don't have enough raw materials to meet their quota.

The Clan goverments seem far more benign then what the IS has to offer (though the FRR would be a exception here). The Draconis Combine was always painted as a horrible faction, but this was mainly because they didn't bother with good PR. The other factions can also be horrible unless your were born into a wealthy or noble family.

With the Clans you atleast know that the biggest badass is in charge instead of the guy who happend to be son of the last ruler. You need badasses in charge to survive in a place like the Kerensky Cluster.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Stormwolf, on 18 July 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

Your view of the Clan council seems to stem mostly from the Clan Smoke Jaguar way of doing things. It is correct that only the Warrior caste can vote, but members of other castes are allowed before the council when there are problems the warriors can solve or need to approve. Clans like Wolf and Jade Falcon tend to pay attention to their lower casts because they know that the entire Clan will suffer if one caste is underperforming. This help can range from freeing up more jumpships for the Merchant caste to challenging a enemy Clan for resources because the workers don't have enough raw materials to meet their quota. The Clan goverments seem far more benign then what the IS has to offer (though the FRR would be a exception here). The Draconis Combine was always painted as a horrible faction, but this was mainly because they didn't bother with good PR. The other factions can also be horrible unless your were born into a wealthy or noble family. With the Clans you atleast know that the biggest badass is in charge instead of the guy who happend to be son of the last ruler. You need badasses in charge to survive in a place like the Kerensky Cluster.

Allowing the peasants to come before you before you make the decision does not mean it is less of an oligarchy. Warriors of Kerensky is quite clear in that the Clans utilize mandatory marriages and whatnot among the lower castes so as to produce the best laborers, best merchants, &c. All of the source material is also quite clear about the "trueborn" versus "freeborn" even among the warrior caste. The Clans breed their leaders in iron wombs. They denigrate "freeborn" members of the supreme caste, and the other castes are utilized as tools to support the warrior caste. It seems nonsensical to act as though the Clans are benign to their lower castes because the warriors will allow the lower castes the means to fulfilling their quotas as determined by the warriors.

"Thank you, sir, for giving me the honor of working myself to death for you."

The Clans have a caste system, which is based on superiors reigning supreme, bigotry, &c. There is nothing benign about it unless you happen to be the one in charge. The Clans that actually treat the lower castes even a little better are often treated as odd in the source material.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Hunson Abadeer, on 18 July 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

The comparison between the Clans and samurai is fairly apt. The samurai during the Sengoku-jidai were actual soldiers, and the bushido philosophy developed over time. Once the Tokugawa came to power, the samurai no longer had endless wars to keep them busy, and all of the land and power shifted upwards. They became a highly ritualistic and elitist class that became tainted by those that brutalized and abused the lower classes. Many of the samurai became foppish aristocrats rather than soldiers. The same thing also occurred in Europe once the nobility no longer had a reason to put on their armour and mount their horses to settle disputes.

The Clanners are the late-term, ritualistic fops. They are quite boastful and arrogant, and they do so love to look down on others. In the end, however, they are not soldiers despite their shiny armour and weapons, and their ritualism serves to make them feel superior while not translating into actual warfare. A fop that spends all of his/her time practicing for duels will be excellent at duels, but that does not mean that they will excel in full-blown war, which is much dirtier and grittier than the ritualistic nonsense the fop is used to.

Look at Olympic fencing. Two people line up and flick their floppy sticks at each other, and it simply comes down to who hits first within the designated area. In most matches, both people would actually be dead had it been a real sword fight. Take an army of fencers, arm them with real swords, and send them against an army of actual soldiers. The result would most likely be a bloodbath with the surviving fencers limping away, whining about all of the biting, clawing, kicking, and whatnot that just was not "fair."

That analogy does not work here. Firstly the Clans, after being the descendants of those that suffered the Usurper as well as Exodus Civil War, were designed to never have a repeat of those atrocities. They are quite correct to refer to the IS as barbarians. The proof is in the pudding. Secondly, ritualized or not the Clans engaged in combat. They shot at things & had things shooting back at them. Their training regimen is brutal & that is speaking generally. We have not even gotten to the Blood Spirits or Steel Vipers. The Clans train with live weapons. The source material says that the combined experience of some of the greatest warriors of the IS cannot compare to what the average Clan warrior goes through in training. So they had the tech & the training to fight. They simply had practices in place that prevented all out slaughter & minimized casualties.

Hunson Abadeer, on 18 July 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

Allowing the peasants to come before you before you make the decision does not mean it is less of an oligarchy. Warriors of Kerensky is quite clear in that the Clans utilize mandatory marriages and whatnot among the lower castes so as to produce the best laborers, best merchants, &c. All of the source material is also quite clear about the "trueborn" versus "freeborn" even among the warrior caste. The Clans breed their leaders in iron wombs. They denigrate "freeborn" members of the supreme caste, and the other castes are utilized as tools to support the warrior caste. It seems nonsensical to act as though the Clans are benign to their lower castes because the warriors will allow the lower castes the means to fulfilling their quotas as determined by the warriors.

"Thank you, sir, for giving me the honor of working myself to death for you."

The Clans have a caste system, which is based on superiors reigning supreme, bigotry, &c. There is nothing benign about it unless you happen to be the one in charge. The Clans that actually treat the lower castes even a little better are often treated as odd in the source material.

For the record that process was in effect long before the iron wombs came about & was used to expand the population including warriors. Regarding your earlier point, the same can be said of the DC. The samurai ruling class calls the shots. All other positions, support them. Since they are the ones that fight for & protect the realm, they get special treatment & rightfully so. Even Takashi Kurita noted that Shin Yodama was a damn good mechwarrior & a loyal servant of the Combine. He commended him for saving his son & grandson's life over & over & would have enrolled him into the Order of the Dragon had he not been a yakuza. The other states may do things to a lesser degree (extremely less so in the FWL) but there is still bias. With the Clans, who your father,mother,brother,sister etc. was has no bearing on you. You must forge your own path. Look at Diana Pryde. As the daughter of Aidan Pryde everyone should have been supportive of her. When they learned she was going for a Bloodname the whole Clan was up in arms against her, because she was a freeborn. Marthe allowed her to compete for one against huge opposition.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 18 July 2012 - 02:38 PM.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Jaroth Winson, on 18 July 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

That analogy does not work here. Firstly the Clans, after being the descendants of those that suffered the Usurper as well as Exodus Civil War, were designed to never have a repeat of those atrocities. They are quite correct to refer to the IS as barbarians. The proof is in the pudding. Secondly, ritualized or not the Clans engaged in combat. They shot at things & had things shooting back at them. Their training regimen is brutal & that is speaking generally. We have not even gotten to the Blood Spirits or Steel Vipers. The Clans train with live weapons. The source material says that the combined experience of some of the greatest warriors of the IS cannot compare to what the average Clan warrior goes through in training. So they had the tech & the training to fight. They simply had practices in place that prevented all out slaughter & minimized casualties.

The Clans have the technology and the training. An Olympic fencer also knows how to use a sword, but they are trained to use it in such a way that does not translate into actual warfare. The Clans utilize a ritualized shell representative of warfare, but it is not true warfare. Their constant whining about the dishonesty and dishonor of the Inner Sphere is proof enough of that. Warfare is warfare. Complaining that warfare is barbaric and wasteful only proves that they are ritualistic fops, not soldiers. The Edo-jidai samurai could also be quite brutal and quite talented in the things they practiced constantly, but that does not mean that they were soldiers as their forefathers had been. European nobles also continued to ritually practice their martial arts, but they became wealthy men playing at soldier rather than being soldiers in the truest sense of the word. The reason why the Clans became ritualistic fops does not negate them being ritualistic fops that lost when faced with having to confront enemies that fought the war like it was a war, not some ritual.

Jaroth Winson, on 18 July 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

For the record that process was in effect long before the iron wombs came about & was used to expand the population including warriors. Regarding your earlier point, the same can be said of the DC. The samurai ruling class calls the shots. All other positions, support them. Since they are the ones that fight for & protect the realm, they get special treatment & rightfully so. Even Takashi Kurita noted that Shin Yodama was a damn good mechwarrior & a loyal servant of the Combine. He commended him for saving his son & grandson's life over & over & would have enrolled him into the Order of the Dragon had he not been a yakuza. The other states may do things to a lesser degree (extremely less so in the FWL) but there is still bias. With the Clans, who your father,mother,brother,sister etc. was has no bearing on you. You must forge your own path. Look at Diana Pryde. As the daughter of Aidan Pryde everyone should have been supportive of her. When they learned she was going for a Bloodname the whole Clan was up in arms against her, because she was a freeborn. Marthe allowed her to compete for one against huge opposition.

The difference between a feudal society and a Clan is that feudalism is structured without necessarily dominating every element of a person's life. People are able to rise in society in the Inner Sphere. There is upward mobility on most worlds throughout the Inner Sphere. The source material is full of people that are not named Davion or Kurita holding ranks, serving as politicians, and on and on. There is practically no upward mobility in the Clans, and the lower castes are heavily regimented to ensure that their pitiful little lives are still serving the warrior caste in the best way possible.

Just look at the practice of mandatory marriage. Warriors of Kerensky is clear that even the lower castes typically have to remain "pure," so merchants are told to marry other merchants, technicians to other technicians, and so on and so forth. For example, "The Clans control civilian-caste genetics through mandatory marriages, usually between members of the same caste. Occasional cross-caste matches do occur, though they usually involve the transfer of one member to the other's caste" (pp. 36). Individuals "who flout mandatory marriage can face severe punishment. Fines are the usual penalty, but chemical reprogramming, torture and even executions are not unheard-of" (pp. 37).

Think about that. You are told what occupation you will have. You are told who to marry for the good of the Clan because you are a genetic match. If that person happens to be of a different caste, you could have your entire world turned upside down as you also have to change your occupation. If you fall in love with someone, you have to hope that the scientists will sign off on it. If they do not and you get married anyway, one or both of you could be reprogrammed, tortured, or killed. The Clans are not merely a feudal society.

Clan players typically focus on the "good" because they all play trueborn warriors, and everyone likes a brutal oligarchic caste system when they are in the top caste. It is easy to rationalize that the person actually enjoys shining your boot while you step on their head, but they would most likely have a different take on the matter, if they were actually able to voice their opinion. If you strip away the idyllic top level (warrior caste), you are left with the lower castes being told their occupations, who to marry, &c. Those freeborn that are actually able to become warriors are still looked down upon, will most likely only serve in subpar units, &c.

[Dimestore]

It did not help that the clan's society treated all IS as 3rd class citizens with the exception of the 'nicer' clans that treated them as 2nd class citizens.

A vaguely modern analogy would be if apartheid-era South Afrika invaded Nigeria. Their idea of treating the Nigerians well would be 2nd-class citizens and there's pretty good odds they would treat them as 3rd class citizens since they were a conquered people.

The freebirth vs truebirth elitism where everyone they conquer is automatically a freebirth gaurantees a strong insurgency and crappy output from conquered planets. There were other issues, of course, but this would have had a huge effect.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Hunson Abadeer, on 18 July 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

The Clans have the technology and the training. An Olympic fencer also knows how to use a sword, but they are trained to use it in such a way that does not translate into actual warfare. The Clans utilize a ritualized shell representative of warfare, but it is not true warfare. Their constant whining about the dishonesty and dishonor of the Inner Sphere is proof enough of that. Warfare is warfare. Complaining that warfare is barbaric and wasteful only proves that they are ritualistic fops, not soldiers. The Edo-jidai samurai could also be quite brutal and quite talented in the things they practiced constantly, but that does not mean that they were soldiers as their forefathers had been. European nobles also continued to ritually practice their martial arts, but they became wealthy men playing at soldier rather than being soldiers in the truest sense of the word. The reason why the Clans became ritualistic fops does not negate them being ritualistic fops that lost when faced with having to confront enemies that fought the war like it was a war, not some ritual.

The Clans have fought dark/bandit caste & pirates before they got to the IS & they do not hold to any form of honor-expectant combat there. The IS was supposed to be different. This is as far as they know where they came from & if you remember when the Jaguars caught the Outbound Light, they revealed:

Quote

Also, there had been a sudden recovery of lostech, and the Inner Sphere was far from falling into shambles.

Wolf Clan Sourcebook - Pg.25

These were the Successor States of the "Great" Houses. They were not expecting them to fight like bandits. They expected them to have learned from the Four Succession Wars that decimated them.

Quote

The difference between a feudal society and a Clan is that feudalism is structured without necessarily dominating every element of a person's life. People are able to rise in society in the Inner Sphere. There is upward mobility on most worlds throughout the Inner Sphere. The source material is full of people that are not named Davion or Kurita holding ranks, serving as politicians, and on and on. There is practically no upward mobility in the Clans, and the lower castes are heavily regimented to ensure that their pitiful little lives are still serving the warrior caste in the best way possible..

Completely incorrect. Feudalism is exactly that. The ruling class/family etc. dictate everything that happens to itself & the lower classes. Back to your samurai, they were above everyone except the Shogun & the Emperor. They could kill an artisan, a farmer, a construction worked with impunity because of a slight. They decreed that only the samurai could be in possession of weapons. In feudalism the vassals pay tribute to their lords. It is written in history. I can give you direct quotes if you like.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Jaroth Winson, on 19 July 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

The Clans have fought dark/bandit caste & pirates before they got to the IS & they do not hold to any form of honor-expectant combat there. The IS was supposed to be different. This is as far as they know where they came from & if you remember when the Jaguars caught the Outbound Light, they revealed:

Wolf Clan Sourcebook - Pg.25

These were the Successor States of the "Great" Houses. They were not expecting them to fight like bandits. They expected them to have learned from the Four Succession Wars that decimated them.

Completely incorrect. Feudalism is exactly that. The ruling class/family etc. dictate everything that happens to itself & the lower classes. Back to your samurai, they were above everyone except the Shogun & the Emperor. They could kill an artisan, a farmer, a construction worked with impunity because of a slight. They decreed that only the samurai could be in possession of weapons. In feudalism the vassals pay tribute to their lords. It is written in history. I can give you direct quotes if you like.

First, Tukayyid says, "Most Clan MechWarriors continued to abide by Clan conventions of battle, refusing to lower themselves to their enemy's level by breaking their own code of honor" (pp. 7). That continued despite the Clans realizing that the Inner Sphere was not only not going to abide by their rules but would actually use their rules against them. It was not simply a matter of being surprised as the same book says, "Beginning with their first contact with Inner Sphere MechWarriors in the Periphery, the Clans faced tactics that convinced them that the people of the Inner Sphere behaved with no sense of honor" (Ibid.).

The Clans had developed their rituals, which did not translate into full-scale warfare, but they kept to their rituals anyway.

Second, no, feudalism is not that. Please show me where the feudal lords of Europe or Asia dictated a person's occupation and who they could marry upon penalty of death. In Japan, people had upward mobility for most of their history. Just look at Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He was born to a peasant farmer/soldier, had no surname, and nothing of his early life suggested he would do great things. Through a lot of misadventures, he rose from peasant to becoming a warlord to being declared regent. He was given his surname by the imperial court. It was actually Hideyoshi that barred samurai from also being farmers and prevented commoners from becoming warriors in 1588. European history is full of people becoming wealthy as merchants, moving into the nobility by being awarded titles rather than inheriting them, being knighted on the battlefield, &c.

Feudalism is nothing but a system of lords and vassals. Peasants are vassals of the local lord. The latter benefits from the labor of the former in exchange for protection. The local lord is then the vassal of the regional lord and so on. People were free to take on whatever occupation they were good at, and it was common in Europe and Asia for commoners to become warriors until very late in history. People could fall in love with each other and get married without being told that their marriage would not be in the best interests of the kingdom. The Clans absolutely are not a feudal society, and the feudal societies of history and the Inner Sphere are not so restrictive as Clan society.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Jaroth Winson, on 19 July 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

Completely incorrect. Feudalism is exactly that. The ruling class/family etc. dictate everything that happens to itself & the lower classes. Back to your samurai, they were above everyone except the Shogun & the Emperor. They could kill an artisan, a farmer, a construction worked with impunity because of a slight. They decreed that only the samurai could be in possession of weapons. In feudalism the vassals pay tribute to their lords. It is written in history. I can give you direct quotes if you like.

I want to reiterate this point. The line between samurai and peasant was much blurrier for most of their history. Peasants could also serve as ashigaru (soldiers) alongside the samurai, and upward mobility was possible as in the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As I said, Hideyoshi was the one that created strict lines between the two and disarmed the populace except for the samurai in 1588. Hideyoshi died in 1598, and it was his efforts that laid the foundation for the ultimate rise of the Tokugawa shogunate, which ushered in the Edo-jidai in 1603.

My point about ritualistic fops was about the samurai of the Edo-jidai, so you are only pointing to my own point. The same thing took place in Europe. The royalty and nobility were once soldiers, but they became ritualistic fops once they were no longer expected to actively fight in near constant wars. Abuses of the lower classes then followed as pomposity and ritual replaced the social contract that had existed between lords and vassals. "It is written in history. I can give you direct quotes if you like."

Feudalism is a system defined by its basic structure, not the abuses perpetrated by certain individuals in certain snapshots in time anymore than communism is defined by the Soviet Union. Pointing to the ritualistic fops that I already discussed only makes my point for me, and you will not find where European or Japanese feudalism translated into the lower classes being told what job to perform, who to marry, to have or not have children for the good of the state, or anything of the sort.

The Clans are not a feudalistic society. They are a totalitarian oligarchy.

[Chuggernaut]

The system practiced by Shogunate-era Japan is actually far more similar to the Clan system than anything in the IS, especially with that whole "military class can kill anyone for no reason and most of them won't even feel remorse" bit that the Clans have going on. Only the DC really comes close to that. Even the uber-feudal Davions have guaranteed rights for their people like speech, assembly, trial, and bearing arms.

Yes, life is better for people when they are born into privilege in the IS. But that's true of life ever since society started to stratify with the discovery of agriculture. The question is how people in power treat those out of power, and I can't think of any other place in BT where you have a sourcebook coming out and saying "Yeah, so a Warrior will kill someone, and he might regret that he made an enemy or that he reduced Clan productivity, but that's about it" like Phelan Kell did in WoK. And this is Phelan Kell, a dude who thought Clans were so cool he completely switched sides, so he's probably trying to make them sound better than they are!

Edited by Chuggernaut, 19 July 2012 - 01:00 PM.