Joint fire mandrill and blood spirit campaign questions

[Sjhernan3060]

Immediately after the burrock absorption the adders moth balled a number of captured warships. If the mandrills or spirits trialed for them
Do we think the adders would have fought hard to keep
Them out of spite?

[Sjhernan3060]

What I am hearing is that the mandrills and spirits lacked raw materials and or factory capacity. What viable targets could they have hit and held in the wars of possession?

Atreus? Huntress?

[Gaiiten]

Immediately after the burrock absorption the adders moth balled a number of captured warships. If the mandrills or spirits trialed for them
Do we think the adders would have fought hard to keep
Them out of spite?

IMHO the Adders would have fought very hard to keep these warships.
However I do not think that the Spirit`s Navy would have been capable to fight a Trial of Possession after the Absorption War. Their naval forces were devastated in the fighting.

For the Mandrills, I think they could have done it. BUT, due their kindraas could not agree about a strategy and a Kindraa lone would not have been cabale to maintain another warship, they did not.

[Sjhernan3060]

IMHO the Adders would have fought very hard to keep these warships.
However I do not think that the Spirit`s Navy would have been capable to fight a Trial of Possession after the Absorption War. Their naval forces were devastated in the fighting.

For the Mandrills, I think they could have done it. BUT, due their kindraas could not agree about a strategy and a Kindraa lone would not have been cabale to maintain another warship, they did not.

I must agree chasing more warships before they strengthened their economies would not have been very helpful

[Sjhernan3060]

As you and others  pointed out in the Save the Jags thread, the Smoke Jaguars Brian caches are well nigh cashed in all likelyhood.  But the Nova Cat caches are probably a safe bet for decent equipment - from Star League designs, to IIC's, to to the occasional older OmniMechs.   The Nova Cats were a relatively rich Clan, so anything is possible, certainly all this.

I agree with the Nova Cat”s as a viable option for a cache. I assume due to their chaotic withdrawal any thing that valuable would have been snapped up and plundered quickly? Follow up question: is everything in a cache in basic working order?

[Sjhernan3060]

Have the Blood Spirits higher a sizable fleet from the Snow Ravens and attack Albion. Albion is close to York so you wont need a long supply chain and it was  capital so has lots of manufacturing facilities. Offer the Ravens 10% of the system, the Cheop yards and any Battleship/cruisers they claim as isoral. This nets you the rest of the defending warships and access to any in system caches they may have. Then you have the Ravens right there with yards to bring them up to fighting status for you.

...I may be thinking of offering the Blood Spirits in my game a similar deal. The move just makes sense for both clans to me.

A number of wiser heads then I have convinced me to temper my quixotic obsession with gaining warships the neither the spirits or kindraa mick kreese could maintain as of 3060. Instead it’s seems trialing for and holding at all costs the Cheops shipyards would secure an asset which continue to pay off. Who ever owned it could make income via yard time, create a new trading hub, and limit the adders ability to fully capitalize on their new found wealth of warships

[tassa_kay]

A number of wiser heads then I have convinced me to temper my quixotic obsession with gaining warships the neither the spirits or kindraa mick kreese could maintain as of 3060. Instead it’s seems trialing for and holding at all costs the Cheops shipyards would secure an asset which continue to pay off. Who ever owned it could make income via yard time, create a new trading hub, and limit the adders ability to fully capitalize on their new found wealth of warships

Honestly, I don't see this ever happening, either. There's no way the Mandrills could muster the naval force needed to take the Adders' most important shipyards away from them.

[Sjhernan3060]

As a point of clarification while both the spirits and mandrills are noted as:” resource poor” were they both poor in manufacturing capacity AND raw materials? I always assumed the spirits had the factories etc but never had the raw materials to really crank out units

[Sjhernan3060]

As a point of clarification while both the spirits and mandrills are noted as:” resource poor” were they both poor in manufacturing capacity AND raw materials? I always assumed the spirits had the factories etc but never had the raw materials to really crank out units

Clarification on this. Post invasion did the mandrills provide raw materials for the spirits?

[Sjhernan3060]

I agree with the Nova Cat”s as a viable option for a cache. I assume due to their chaotic withdrawal any thing that valuable would have been snapped up and plundered quickly? Follow up question: is everything in a cache in basic working order?

What worlds would be “off the beaten path” enough for a cache to have not been taken quickly?

[tassa_kay]

As a point of clarification while both the spirits and mandrills are noted as:” resource poor” were they both poor in manufacturing capacity AND raw materials? I always assumed the spirits had the factories etc but never had the raw materials to really crank out units

It's never really specified, but I personally suspect it's more the opposite: while York itself is self-sufficient, the Spirits seemed to lack in manufacturing capacity. Example: the Fire Mandrills had a factory on York making Delphynes. Or the fact that the Spirits were specifically targeting a lot of factories during the WoR.

[Alan Grant]

What worlds would be “off the beaten path” enough for a cache to have not been taken quickly?

During the Wars of Reaving era we see lots of hints of "off the beaten path" stuff. Naval caches in particular (and that doesn't have to mean warships, it can mean jumpships, dropships, as well as stores of supplies just suspended on space). Often in uninhabited systems with very technical names.

A good example is Depot MSKC-2, a naval cache in a planetless system. The Star Adders go there in the book Wars of Reaving looking to reactivate some warships after the losses they've taken, but find Dark Caste/Society already there and it turns into a fight. The Lola III Cameron's Flame was destroyed there.

I know there are other examples, but I can't look at the books right now. The point is that I would look to uninhabited star systems for "off the beaten path" whatever you need. The Clans did a lot of exploring of the adjacent space and of the star systems in around and between the Clan Homeworlds and the Pentagon worlds. In the process the canon evidence suggests they found lots of good places to store stuff. Probably presuming if they left it off the public star maps it would be relatively secure (at least that was the theory, the Wars of Reaving era proved that theory wrong).

The actual Clan Homeworlds/Pentagon Worlds. Not so much, although space caches are definitely still an option. We see the Sharks sneak into a naval cache in the Babylon system and recover the SLS Marseilles after their ejection from the Homeworlds. Generally speaking, any cache of any decent size, the other Clans know it's there. They know where the Castle Brians are and where big stores of anything will be. Can't rule out the odd bunker complex not found on a map. sitting in a sparsely populated part of a planet, but anything bigger than that close to civilization is probably bordering on unrealistic.

As for the Nova Cat's caches, they were probably all or mostly plundered quite quickly. As much to claim what was there as it was to deny it to Nova Cats and to kill some of them. The other Clans weren't just out for resources or enclaves, they were also looking for Nova Cats to kill. They totally ignored guidance from the Grand Council that basically said the Nova Cats were supposed to be allowed a grace period to leave the Homeworlds Instead most of the other Clans pounded them, ignoring Zell and shredding every Nova Cat they could find. They aggressively went after the Nova Cats everywhere they could think to look. After the Great Refusal they were just that angry. Given that relentless drive, I think they didn't leave too many stones unturned in their effort to find even one more Nova Cat to kill.

But some unmanned or mostly unmanned naval cache in space somewhere? In an otherwise uninhabited system? I could see that being neglected or forgotten for a bit longer. Perhaps long enough for another Clan to get at it, loot it, and get out again without tremendous interference by the other Clans. We don't have any canon evidence of anything like that happening. But I think it wouldn't be that unrealistic.

[Sjhernan3060]

During the Wars of Reaving era we see lots of hints of "off the beaten path" stuff. Naval caches in particular (and that doesn't have to mean warships, it can mean jumpships, dropships, as well as stores of supplies just suspended on space). Often in uninhabited systems with very technical names.

A good example is Depot MSKC-2, a naval cache in a planetless system. The Star Adders go there in the book Wars of Reaving looking to reactivate some warships after the losses they've taken, but find Dark Caste/Society already there and it turns into a fight. The Lola III Cameron's Flame was destroyed there.

I know there are other examples, but I can't look at the books right now. The point is that I would look to uninhabited star systems for "off the beaten path" whatever you need. The Clans did a lot of exploring of the adjacent space and of the star systems in around and between the Clan Homeworlds and the Pentagon worlds. In the process the canon evidence suggests they found lots of good places to store stuff. Probably presuming if they left it off the public star maps it would be relatively secure (at least that was the theory, the Wars of Reaving era proved that theory wrong).

The actual Clan Homeworlds/Pentagon Worlds. Not so much, although space caches are definitely still an option. We see the Sharks sneak into a naval cache in the Babylon system and recover the SLS Marseilles after their ejection from the Homeworlds. Generally speaking, any cache of any decent size, the other Clans know it's there. They know where the Castle Brians are and where big stores of anything will be. Can't rule out the odd bunker complex not found on a map. sitting in a sparsely populated part of a planet, but anything bigger than that close to civilization is probably bordering on unrealistic.

As for the Nova Cat's caches, they were probably all or mostly plundered quite quickly. As much to claim what was there as it was to deny it to Nova Cats and to kill some of them. The other Clans weren't just out for resources or enclaves, they were also looking for Nova Cats to kill. They totally ignored guidance from the Grand Council that basically said the Nova Cats were supposed to be allowed a grace period to leave the Homeworlds Instead most of the other Clans pounded them, ignoring Zell and shredding every Nova Cat they could find. They aggressively went after the Nova Cats everywhere they could think to look. After the Great Refusal they were just that angry. Given that relentless drive, I think they didn't leave too many stones unturned in their effort to find even one more Nova Cat to kill.

But some unmanned or mostly unmanned naval cache in space somewhere? In an otherwise uninhabited system? I could see that being neglected or forgotten for a bit longer. Perhaps long enough for another Clan to get at it, loot it, and get out again without tremendous interference by the other Clans. We don't have any canon evidence of anything like that happening. But I think it wouldn't be that unrealistic.

Great points! Also the mandrills and spirits strike me as two clans who would have been PO enough to just lunge at the nova cats as soon as they could such as hitting a convo or ill defended enclave. Do we have a pre great refusal breakdown of what worked the cats held in clan space?

[Sjhernan3060]

After rereading the spirits sigma galaxy entry in fm crusaders it mentions they darn near revolted when they were not given permission to assist the mandrills... if another blood house wanted to join a kindraa from outside of the mandrills, would said house have to be abjured first?

Following up on this what is the process for another house to join the mandrills to form a new kindraa

[tassa_kay]

I don't see that scenario ever happening. Not only are the Mandrills very insular, rivaling the Blood Spirits in that respect, but I can't even fathom a circumstance in which an entire Bloodhouse would willingly leave their own Clan to join another Clan.

[Alan Grant]

I agree with Tassa. That's not a thing, there is no process.
 
A series of things would have to click into place that seem almost impossible. Basically, every other Kindraa would have to decide to accept the newcomers and be willing to support that decision. Given how little the Kindraa actually agree on anything, let alone a question/issue of this magnitude, that seems unrealistic.

As part of that, to be successful, I'd imagine this new Kindraa would have to bring a lot to the table. So they'd have their own equipment, their own enclaves etc. Because the other Kindraa aren't going to give them that stuff. Why would they?

More than that, they'd probably have to shower all the other Kindraa with gifts and things in order to curry their favor and support to get this going. It would truly have to be a deal that the Mandrills can't refuse. Here's a free cluster's worth of equipment and a pre-fabricated BattleMech factory.

But that same process would also carry a lot of suspicion that this is some kind of trick by another Clan intended to infiltrate the Mandrills and destroy them from the inside. A kind of doom loop that I don't see how you can break out of.

On top of that, outside of the Mandrills which treat the Kindraa as Clan-level entities for purposes of ownership, Bloodname Houses don't really own their own stuff. Warrior equipment, enclaves, sibkos, genetic legacies. It's all owned by the Clan, not the Bloodname House. So unless the originating Clan basically orchestrated this plan, it likely doesn't happen. If the originating Clan does support this attempt to create a Kindraa, that adds to the doom loop logic that this is a trap of some trap designed to infiltrate the Mandrills.

Could someone have perhaps coughed up an outlandish version of this that worked during the Wars of Reaving era? The survivors of a Clan, that happen to be of a particular Bloodname House, flee to the Mandrills before they starve to death? Perhaps, but even then I'd expect the Mandrills to just absorb that into one or more existing Kindraa, not stand up a new one.

Sorry, I don't see a path forward on this.

[Sjhernan3060]

As you and others  pointed out in the Save the Jags thread, the Smoke Jaguars Brian caches are well nigh cashed in all likelyhood.  But the Nova Cat caches are probably a safe bet for decent equipment - from Star League designs, to IIC's, to to the occasional older OmniMechs.   The Nova Cats were a relatively rich Clan, so anything is possible, certainly all this.

Re: possible nova cat caches what worlds did the cats hold that the spirits or mandrills could have hit quickly?

[WONC]

Barcella was their capitol, but it's on the other side of the Homeworlds from the Mandrills. Other holdings are more scattered around, but the Pentagon worlds would make sense as the best bet. They're the longest settled, had the most infrastructure, and for the purposes of a raid are a lot closer to each other. I can't remember off the top of my head, but Circe(?) comes to mind as the world that might fit your bill.

[Sjhernan3060]

Barcella was their capitol, but it's on the other side of the Homeworlds from the Mandrills. Other holdings are more scattered around, but the Pentagon worlds would make sense as the best bet. They're the longest settled, had the most infrastructure, and for the purposes of a raid are a lot closer to each other. I can't remember off the top of my head, but Circe(?) comes to mind as the world that might fit your bill.

Thank you! I am now off to sarna to do some research

[Sjhernan3060]

Smaller scale idea: the spirits eventually took over the mandrills watch in canon but I am not sure if it is stated what they got in return?

Perhaps some of the ultra elite mick kreese pilots were loaned out as trainers to beef up the spirits naval arm?

Following up on this what would the spirits have gotten for this?