Ok let me end the Comstar thing, first off the number I put up was an armies worth of mechs and only mechs if that is ironically how much a fully loaded out division has then even if only one army was sent towards the clans then they were already woefully outnumbered. Also the reason that the clans bid down and accepted the fight was because the clans were engaged in bidding in their fashion the fight was to be fought in clan fashion...meaning zellbringen was to be adhered to. Even Focht said he would fight them on their own terms, when he had no intention of doing so, it was never meant to even resemble a fair or honorable fight, it was supposed to bleed us dry, which it almost did. Focht is a devil, and the Nova Cats were right (for once). But Tukayyid taught us one thing, never trust an IS commander, he is not a warrior, he is a soldier.
As for Turtle Bay there are three things that led to that scenario and I will endeavor to best explain them.
1) Jaguar Command Culture- In Clan Smoke Jaguar you did not normally report the happenings in your field, or what you had command over. They trusted their commanders to do the right thing an successfully conclude the mission. Resultant of this, Some Jaguar High Command normally learned of things after the fact, good or bad, because the commanders did not want to bother the High Command staff with their small problems. Especially if their problems were actually problems, assumed incompetence is just as bad as the real thing because someone else is always ready to trial you for your position. Now I say all of this to say that the people of Edo had been rebelling for about 9 months before the Star Colonel in charge of the Sabre Cat decided it would be expedient to raze the city. High Command did not heard about it until it came through the Chatter web that a Jaguar Officer had fired upon civilians. The reason why the Jaguars acted so defensively when other clans brought it to their attention is because they were blindsided but to let the other clans know would be a sign of weakness. Jaguar High Command immediately recalled this officer and he was returned to Huntress for trial, but the damage had been done. Had High Command known of this unrest before hand it would have been dealt with differently.
2) Jaguar Assumptions- Clan Smoke Jaguar assumed, incorrectly, that when the people of the Inner Sphere were captured as part of their planets that they would accept their new role as members of Clan Smoke Jaguar, all working for the greater good of the clan, as any citizen of the Kerensky Cluster would do. When the people not only did not like this but actually took up arms against the warriors and murdered techs and laborers that were left to help them in their new duties, the Jaguar warriors in command were incredibly shocked. This shock turned to rage when they realized this was rebellion, rebellion is a capital crime in the clans for its waste and unclanlike nature. So yes they took a hardline stance in it being put down.
3) Clan Culture in General- The clans, as you all know, are lead by the warrior caste. One thing that makes the warrior caste unique and important is that they are the only people in a clan that take up arms in its defense and in its best interest for resource gathering. The people of the clans are completely insulated from combat and respect their warriors because they enjoy many of the niceties of life while warriors fight and die for those they will never even know. So when the warriors found out that new castemembers (the assumptions come into play here) are not only disrespectful but going so far as to take their sacred right as warriors and sully it in their weilding of weapons, they went batshit crazy. This had not been done, and they would not tolerate it. Once warriors were killed in this rebellion it now was very serious as that was one more warrior that would not continue the invasion, one more warrior lost ignobly. Once warrior casualties came to a certain level the Star Colonel aboard the Sabre Cat decided that it was less wasteful to save the military might of the clan by cutting out the cancer that was Edo, they would save more value to the clan by not expending any more warriors to put down this rebellion while saving most of the city, now it was to the point that it would save more warriors and other civilians not involved by destroying the entire city, as the entire city was in the streets as it already burned.
Non of this makes up for the civilian loss, and do remember that the High Command took direct control of the planet and punished the warrior responsible, but my clan has been pointed at as a saturday morning cartoon bad guy that it simply is not. As Dihm said, there are shades of grey all around. The Inner Sphere annihilated worlds simply because they were too hard to take, some them calling us for Edo is ridiculous. Especially when we were against it, it was the act of a man, whereas the Inner Sphere's massacres were all government sanctioned.
Edited by Amarus Cameron, 06 January 2012 - 04:46 AM.