Any speculations? Are they out there? Are they going to return? Is there a future for my favorite Clan?
What we know:
Most of Clan Wolverine died - either when its evacuation staging point was nuked in the Clan Homeworlds, or when most of its ships and personnel were caught in the Barbados Deep Periphery system. There were, however, some survivors.
Two scouting groups missed the big fracas, and reunited afterwards. They added a late-arriving contingent of Wolverine sibcadets, and then headed for the Inner Sphere. They became the Minnesota Tribe.
A third scouting group failed to link up, but was not recorded as being destroyed. There's an outside chance they became the Umayyads.
A few Wolverine WarShips fled during the Barbados fight, with Steel Vipers in hot pursuit. One of those ships later turned up in service to the Word of Blake during the Jihad. Did ComStar find it derelict in the Deep Periphery and mothball it for later, or did they meet up with that ship and grant them sanctuary (forming the basis for the rumored "Cabal" inside ComStar/Word of Blake)?
As to the Minnesota Tribe, we have what appears to be concrete evidence that the Tribe circled clockwise around the Inner Sphere and built a base on a world about one jump coreward of the non-Tribe-related world of McEvedy's Folly. At some point, that base was abandoned - possibly with violence involved. By the latter part of the 31st century, unknown forces using Manei Domini equipment were guarding the world, exterminating an Interstellar Expeditions team on the surface.
What happened, and where'd they go?
My theory: The crew of the Zughoffer Weir did indeed meet up with ComStar and gain sanctuary - either on Mars, or on at least one of the Hidden Five. (Perhaps both). Their descendants were the ones pushing for the anti-Clan Jihad, and also the ones responsible for the "visions" of monstrous beasts descending from the Periphery (triggering the formation of the Explorer Corps). A member of the cabal was also responsible for the leak of the purported "Wolverine Journal," which contains a few nuggets of true data, but mostly false information. (Based on the disconnect between Blaine Pardoe's story and the journal narrative).
Meanwhile, the Tribe seems to have lived in secrecy until at least the early 3000s on their base rimward of the Magistracy of Canopus. At some point, they made contact with the Magistracy, offering tech. (MoC from the earliest sourcebooks boasted of a source of technology from somewhere beyond the Periphery.) When parties unknown smashed their base, the survivors Exodused again to the Magistracy. The MoC went from having to write its army manuals down to a fifth grade reading level in 3025 to having high-tech cyborg super agents in the Ebon Directorate circa 3040. That's a lot of progress in 15 years. Did I mention the last director of the Wolverine Watch was Trish Ebon?
Meta theory - because the unknown anti-IE force at the Tribe baseworld was using advanced WoB tech, my guess is that the Cabal Wolverines discovered and had a falling out with the Tribe Wolverines in the early 3000s, and the Cabal massacred the Tribe, leaving the survivors to flee to the Magistracy, promising tech for sanctuary. This could explain why the fiction shows that there was a shadow war between the Manei Domini and the Ebon Directorate in the WoB-occupied Magistracy during the Jihad - a continuation of the Tribe/Cabal conflict.
Anyhoo - the theory fits the existing facts, but is by no means airtight or in any way canon.
