"I Am Jade Falcon" - Society Reference??

[Cubby]

Just finished "I Am Jade Falcon" for the first time. Spoilers, I guess:

2/3 or so of the way through the book, Joanna stumbles upon the secret lab facility cross-breeding Jade Falcon and Wolf strains. The following passage appears on page 201, spoken by Kael Pershaw:

"I cannot speak freely, Joanna, but I will say this: what you have discovered may go far beyond some genetic machinations perpetrated by our Jade Falcon scientist caste. I have for some time suspected a network of conspiracy linking the scientist castes of many Clans--perhaps every Clan."

"But why? What are they up to?"

"I am not free to discuss that, especially with so much still based on speculation. But I have begun to suspect the scientist castes of somehow setting themselves apart, almost as if they had formed a separate Clan of their own. Frankly, it turns my blood cold to think of it"

Is this a crazy early (1995) reference to The Society as presented in WoR?? Did the Catalyst devs know of plans to pick up this (fairly obscure) plot thread somewhere down the road, and eventually do so 16 years later? Or was it just intended as a loose thread by author Robert Thurston with no real intent, until someone else picked it up a long time later?

The only other early reference I could easily find is a tiny mention in the "Clans: Warriors of Kerensky" book, written in-universe by Phelan Kell. It comes on page 59, in a discussion of the governance of civilian castes:

"With the exception of the Diamond Shark merchant caste, and rumors about the head of the Jade Falcon scientists, I know of no systematic abuse of power by the head of a civilian caste."

Later in the book, the head of the scientist caste is listed as Etienne (Balzac), so that seems like a clear cut if really really obscure mention of what would come more than a decade later.

[Peacemaker]

Is this a crazy early (1995) reference to The Society as presented in WoR??

Yes.

Did the Catalyst devs know of plans to pick up this (fairly obscure) plot thread somewhere down the road, and eventually do so 16 years later?

I doubt it; I've never heard anything to that effect.

Or was it just intended as a loose thread by author Robert Thurston with no real intent, until someone else picked it up a long time later?

Probably.

[worktroll]

FASA were pretty good at laying down threads which could be picked up later. The Kerensky Exodus led directly to the Wolf's Dragoons and ultimately the Clans, with a side order of Minnesota Tribe and Vandenburg White Wings. The schisms in ComStar were also there from the Warrior trilogy.

Had FASA outlined the Wars of Reaving? Of course not. But I can easily imagine someone saying "Hey, the Clans are kinda repressive about the caste system, I can see we can do something with that down the track", and giving Thurston some pointers on what to include. The latter-day Devs then pick up the strings, and start weaving their own story from those foundations, that sort of thing.

W.

[Cubby]

Update: I'm most of the way through "Falcon Rising," which I hadn't read back when it first came out, and obviously that book adds a lot to the "scientist caste conspiracy" proto-Society stuff. To the point of Marthe Pryde even saying at one point:

"Peri, they are so organized they could form their own Clan, They even have their own mercenaries, mostly recruits from the bandit caste whom they use as bodyguards and, occasionally, as in your case, assassins."

That's a pretty major plot thread that I have to think TPTB at the time must have wanted to follow up on eventually--hard to believe there wasn't a post-it note stuck somewhere that said: "Don't forget there's another Clan-sized force run by the Scientist Caste out there that we should probably do something with."

But since this is the last novel in the Thurston Jade Falcon series and, as far as I know, the last classic-era novel to prominently mention the Jade Falcons, it's cool that someone remembered that post-it note and took the thread up 12 years later as a big part of the WoR.

[Savage Coyote]

I saw some WoR material in 2006 or 2007, so I know it's been planned back then (and the draft I saw wasn't done up on the fly.)

[Atlas3060]

Besides it would stand to reason that a super repressive society like the Clans would make something like this.
The Scientists are one step below actually ruling, yet they make the warriors who do rule. That's not completely logical.
Time to kill off some warriors.

I had theories long ago that they would unite the Clans under some IlClan due to their manipulations of younger warriors or things like that.
Looks like I was partially wrong.

[Kommando]

The Op Klondike book is littered with references to the ilClan too.

so FASA had the beginnings of the War of Reaving planned that far back. Thats scary levels of planning.

[DarkSpade]

I imagine the old books are full of little tidbits like that one.   Even the most innocent comment could hint at something even the writers don't know about yet.

Andy Chambers once said the best piece of advice he ever got from his predecessor at Games-Workshop was to leave open strings.  Even if you have no idea what to do with them now, they could be a gold mine later.  He used the Kroots as an example of this.  They were originally nothing more than a random alien image in a rule book.

[roosterboy]

The Op Klondike book is littered with references to the ilClan too.

so FASA had the beginnings of the War of Reaving planned that far back. Thats scary levels of planning.

 ??? Obviously you must mean some other book because the Historical: Operation Klondike came out just a year and a half before Wars of Reaving.

[Kommando]

No, i mean the stuff nicholas kerensky said. i'm assuming FASA had info on the op klondike before the book was released by catalyst. I could but im not going to go back through my 3050 FASA pdfs looking for the scanned words ilClan.