2 replies to this topic

[Richard Hazen]

I was wondering, in lore, is there a way for mechwarriors to end up in a different clan, like via a trial of possession or something?

[martian]

Will Hawker, on 24 November 2021 - 01:35 AM, said:

I was wondering, in lore, is there a way for mechwarriors to end up in a different clan, like via a trial of possession or something?

For example, one way is a Trial of Possession. To put it simply, one Clan visits some other Clan and declares a Trial for the other Clan's MechWarriors. Essentially, the same way they would declare a Trial for natural resources, BattleMechs, etc.

Another option is Abtakha - a Clan Warrior taken as a "prisoner of war" in some Clan Trial or something, who gradually regains his Warrior status in his new Clan.

[ambosen]

It's actually pretty common for mechwarriors in conflicts between clans whose mechs are destroyed or disabled but survive to be taken as bondsmen.

A lot of times they'll be traded back to their parent clan, particularly if the two clans make peace at some later date, but a good chunk of the time the clanner mechwarrior will be temporarily relegated to the laborer caste until such time as the warrior who captured them deems them eligible to essentially regain status as a warrior, only within their new clan. The exact ways this can happen varies from clan to clan, but a new trial of position forr their former warrior position and the warrior that took them cutting their bondcord are both pretty standard rituals. Different clans have their own idea on who's eligible to be adopted into another clan's warrior caste as well: some of the crusader clans like the Jade Falcons and Smoke Jaguars didn't generally consider even exceptionally talented freebirth warriors as eligible, whereas clan wolf particularly the wolves in exile, many of whom were former inner sphere bondsmen who'd had their bondcords cut and been adopted back into the clan's warrior caste and clan ghost bear which really didn't have much stigma against freebirths to begin with, caring only for a warriors inherent talents for the most part.

In fact clan wolf in particular under Ulric Kerensky may have gone so far as to possibly fake or stretch documentation so that captured members of the Kell hounds mercenary unit who'd earned considerable status in the clan after being taken as bondsmen then elevated to warrior caste could take their actual given names as legal to use clan bloodnames.

Oh, also the clans in general were a lot less likely to quickly promote bondsmen back to warrior status from clans they didn't typically get along to well with. Sometimes if relations between the clans were particularly bad, they might even flat out murder them rather then taking them as bondsmen.

This is believed to have happened both to surrendering clan wolverine survivors (who were accused, likely falsely of using nuclear weapons on another clan's civilian populace and gene repositories during combat resulting in them being subjected to a trial of anihilation) and later a good chunk of clan Smoke jaguar's surviving warriors when they pretty much lead the entire inner sphere right to the clan homeworlds in a rretreat after enacting numerous atrocities against inner sphere civilians which predictably, pissed both the inner sphere and many of the other clans off.

Also, taking members of clan Goliath scorpion was pretty rare because many of their mechwarriors were literally drug addicts who became decidedly violent and unpredictable while forced to quit necrosia cold turkey, as well as suffered from numerous medical issues specifically caused by their habitual drug use. Many clans would release their warriors if captured just not to deal with the headache.