Why are so few bloodnames active?

[dherve10]

Was there some great culling of bloodnames? In most of the old sourcebooks only around a dozen exclusive bloodnames are given despite the founding clans having 40 members each. I know a few of these original are non-exclusive, but that still seems like a big disparity. I'm also aware that some bloodnames are reaved, but to be down to 33% of the original seems pretty severe. Was there a certain period of Clan history or particular event that has been credited with this phenomenon?

Secondarily, I've noticed some use of names that are not on the active list. For instance, in Bills' Path of Glory, Tirant Higall has a bloodname that is not among the active list given in the Comstar book for the Nova Cats. Are there some blood names that have very low blood counts that are active but so low as to not really be worthy of official mention? In the same novel he talks about the 11 blood chapels in Ways of Seeing Park that correspond to the 11 named in the Comstar Sourcebook, and Higall is not among them.

[The Wobbly Guy]

From a meta perspective, because given the size of each clan touman, it really did not make much sense for all 40 bloodnames to be active with full 25 bloodrights. That makes 1000 bloodnamed warriors in each clan alone. Imagine every time there is a trial of bloodright, you need a pool of 32 warriors to fight for it.

Now assuming the average turnover of bloonames is 20 years, that means there would be 50 bloodname trials a year. The disruption it causes the touman is significant. Also, consider the participant pool - it could mean 50x32 = 1600 warriors involved.

One clan cluster is, at an estimate, 4 mech trinaries (60 mechwarriors), 2 elemental trinaries (150 elementals), and 1 aerospace trinary (30 pilots) = 240 warriors.

Each clan has abt 30-50 clusters. A small clan has abt 7200 warriors only. For 1600 of them to be involved in a bloodname trial is insane. Not to mention, are there even sufficient eligible candidates within those 30 clusters?

So, the current arrangement makes the most sense. Some bloodhouses may have only 1-5 active bloodrights, and even spread across several clans.

[paladin2019]

Why are so few bloodnames active? So that you can make up your own. Completely defined settings are boring for gameplay.

[wantec]

Why are so few bloodnames active? So that you can make up your own. Completely defined settings are boring for gameplay.

This was likely the case back when the Clans first debuted and up until Operation Klondike came out. It left room for writers to work without everything being spelled out.

[Mendrugo]

Was there some great culling of bloodnames? In most of the old sourcebooks only around a dozen exclusive bloodnames are given despite the founding clans having 40 members each. I know a few of these original are non-exclusive, but that still seems like a big disparity. I'm also aware that some bloodnames are reaved, but to be down to 33% of the original seems pretty severe. Was there a certain period of Clan history or particular event that has been credited with this phenomenon?

Secondarily, I've noticed some use of names that are not on the active list. For instance, in Bills' Path of Glory, Tirant Higall has a bloodname that is not among the active list given in the Comstar book for the Nova Cats. Are there some blood names that have very low blood counts that are active but so low as to not really be worthy of official mention? In the same novel he talks about the 11 blood chapels in Ways of Seeing Park that correspond to the 11 named in the Comstar Sourcebook, and Higall is not among them.

An MWDA LinkNet article describes the tradition of the Great Reavings, an annual ritual that was used to trim down bloodhouses that had performed poorly in the previous year.  It noted that, through the use of the practice, some bloodhouses were down to single digits of active bloodrights.  However, once the Pax Republica ended, many more opportunities for martial glory emerged, and the Great Reavings started to feature far more Trials of Propagation than Trials of Reaving, and even some Trials of Founding, bringing the numbers back up.

By 3150, not only are there opportunities for any Bloodhouse you feel like to be active once more, but for never-before-seen Bloodhouses to be active alongside them, such as Magnusson and Miraborg in the Ghost Bears.

[paladin2019]

This was likely the case back when the Clans first debuted and up until Operation Klondike came out. It left room for writers to work without everything being spelled out.

Not just "writers". People are still playing the game and building their own stories.

[dherve10]

Thanks for your responses!

[Generic Clanner 24601]

Unless specifically stated, I just assume all Bloodnames of a Clan are in use. Sure, there might only be a few active Bloodrights for a house. The ones we don't here about are just the lower rung. They don't get the resources or opportunities that the more prominent Bloodhouses get.

[Stormlion1]

Lot of names and lineages have been culled. But look at the Wolves which have shared Bloodnames with the Wolves-in-Exile. There still trying to figure out which are 'true' and which will be culled. Or possibly they will extend bloodname limits past the limits imposed by Nicky K.

[wantec]

Lot of names and lineages have been culled. But look at the Wolves which have shared Bloodnames with the Wolves-in-Exile. There still trying to figure out which are 'true' and which will be culled. Or possibly they will extend bloodname limits past the limits imposed by Nicky K.

It's an interesting situation. Although after the casualties of the battle for Terra and the ilClan trial, there may not be too many duplicate pairs still surviving. If it was me, I'd just let it be until both have died. A more ruthless option would be a battle between the two for the bloodheritage. Let the losing holder battle for a new heritage.

[Kojak]

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding at the root of the OP's question. The Bloodnames listed in the old Field Manuals aren't the entirety of the Bloodnames available to them -- they're just the ones exclusive, at that time, to that Clan. Hundreds of other Bloodnames exist, they're just used by multiple Clans -- and it's safe to assume that unless otherwise stated somewhere in the fluff, any given Bloodname you can find in the master list in Historical: Operation Klondike is still in use. They might not have the full 25 active lineages, but they're still chugging along, filling out the collective officer corps of the Clans.

[paladin2019]

And, as a cooperative narrative venture with a potentially unlimited number of "AUs", you have to leave a lot of room for unspecified bloodnames that different versions of the setting can create.

[wantec]

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding at the root of the OP's question. The Bloodnames listed in the old Field Manuals aren't the entirety of the Bloodnames available to them -- they're just the ones exclusive, at that time, to that Clan. Hundreds of other Bloodnames exist, they're just used by multiple Clans -- and it's safe to assume that unless otherwise stated somewhere in the fluff, any given Bloodname you can find in the master list in Historical: Operation Klondike is still in use. They might not have the full 25 active lineages, but they're still chugging along, filling out the collective officer corps of the Clans.

There's also updated lists post-WoR in the Founder's Future section of Wars of Reaving for HW (plus Scorpions) and IS Clans.

[rebs]

It only makes sense that dormant bloodlines are reactivated as time passes and the Clan gene puddle gets thinner, so I think it's actually limited by authors - or conversely, not limited - due to authors either choosing or not choosing to make use of a rare Bloodname.

[Gaiiten]

You shall not forget the importance of the Blood Break festivals.

Many Bloodnamed enjoy great glittering parties on Strana Mechty beaches, so there are only few left to fgith and doing other warriors` thingy .

Source: What you ever want to know about the Clans, but nobody would make effort to write about.

 ;)

[Colt Ward]

Each clan has abt 30-50 clusters. A small clan has abt 7200 warriors only. For 1600 of them to be involved in a bloodname trial is insane. Not to mention, are there even sufficient eligible candidates within those 30 clusters?

Not quite . . . you are forgetting the warriors on warships, dropships, jumpships . . . those in the paramilitary police, those assigned to training sibkos, and provisional garrisons such as those depicted in the Explorer Corps or the Falcon's Nest on Huntress.

Further, MOST Bloodnames are going to be shared . . . while FMCC/WC does not list all exclusives, just the most prominent exclusive.  And most will not have full counts before Op Revival.

But Bloodname competition is one of those things that causes the drastic Clan touman turnover- part of why their 'generation' is 5 years.

[tassa_kay]

FMCC/WC does not list all exclusives, just the most prominent exclusive.

Source for this?

[Hellraiser]

Was there some great culling of bloodnames? In most of the old sourcebooks only around a dozen exclusive bloodnames are given despite the founding clans having 40 members each. I know a few of these original are non-exclusive, but that still seems like a big disparity. I'm also aware that some bloodnames are reaved, but to be down to 33% of the original seems pretty severe. Was there a certain period of Clan history or particular event that has been credited with this phenomenon?

Secondarily, I've noticed some use of names that are not on the active list. For instance, in Bills' Path of Glory, Tirant Higall has a bloodname that is not among the active list given in the Comstar book for the Nova Cats. Are there some blood names that have very low blood counts that are active but so low as to not really be worthy of official mention? In the same novel he talks about the 11 blood chapels in Ways of Seeing Park that correspond to the 11 named in the Comstar Sourcebook, and Higall is not among them.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding at the root of the OP's question. The Bloodnames listed in the old Field Manuals aren't the entirety of the Bloodnames available to them -- they're just the ones exclusive, at that time, to that Clan. Hundreds of other Bloodnames exist, they're just used by multiple Clans -- and it's safe to assume that unless otherwise stated somewhere in the fluff, any given Bloodname you can find in the master list in Historical: Operation Klondike is still in use. They might not have the full 25 active lineages, but they're still chugging along, filling out the collective officer corps of the Clans.

^^^   THIS


The Dozen-ish Names listed are NOT the only active names for each clan.

The names listed for each clan are the ones where that clan controls all 25 individual Heritages of that name.

If the name isn't listed, but is one of the original 40 for that house, it means that somewhere along the decades, the house lost control of 1 (or more) of the Heritages along the way & it is now shared by another clan.

For example:

If you count just the base 40 the Wolves started with they had exclusive control of all 25 heritages for only 9 of their bloodnames in 3052  (No Leader-Trio or Widowmakers)

It's not that there were only those names, just that the Wolves were only in control of 24 or less of the heritages.

General - Produces all 3 phenotypes of outstanding caliber.
Fetladral

Mechwarrior - Produces all 3 phenotypes, but, only MW Genes are top of the line.
Carns,  Radick,  Ward      

Elementals - Produces all 3 phenotypes, but, only Elemental Genes are top of the line.
Shaw,  Sradac,  Tutuola

Pilots - Produces all 3 phenotypes, but, only ASP Genes are top of the line.
Ch'in,  Mehta


By the time of the Wars of Reaving,  they had also lost complete control of Sradac & Mehta.
And the Shaw & Ch'in lines were down to less than 6 active heritages each.

Unless specifically stated, I just assume all Bloodnames of a Clan are in use. Sure, there might only be a few active Bloodrights for a house.

Agreed

[Colt Ward]

The Wolves also did not use all of the Widowmaker Bloodnames either- FREX, the guy that shot Nicky?  Yeah, not used.

As for tassa's question, I want to say it was those two books themselves.  I have to find FMWC after some boxes got moved.

[Hellraiser]

The Wolves also did not use all of the Widowmaker Bloodnames either- FREX, the guy that shot Nicky?  Yeah, not used.

That might not be right actually.

Wolf Khan Jerome Winson carried evidence of Clan Widowmaker's brutal treatment of their civilian and lower caste. Although the Widowmakers argued that the Wolves were manipulating them, ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky and the Grand Council would carry out the absorption of Clan Widowmaker. During the fight between Jerome and Cal, Widowmaker mechs were grouping on Khan Winson in order to save their Khan. However, tragedy struck when Cal Jorgensson shot a peering Atlas looking at him. Unknowingly, Cal had just killed Nicholas Kerensky, ilKhan of the Clans (whether the act was unintentional or deliberate is still debated). This act would send the Wolves into a frenzy and kill any living Widowmaker on sight, turning the battle into a virtual Trial of Annihilation. Despite this, the Widowmaker Bloodnames survived the aftermath (save for the Vordermark and Karrige Bloodnames) and live on within Clan Wolf. These Bloodnames would remain dormant until the aftermath of the Refusal War, which split Clan Wolf into two factions. The Crusader Wolves, needing Bloodrights to recuperate from the battle, reactivated these Bloodnames for their Clan.[39]

Its from Sarna & source is WoK

Looks like Khan Jorgensson might have still gotten used, & only lists Vordermark & Karrige as being destroyed.
Not that it has to be super common, maybe just a couple heritages for testing.

[Colt Ward]

So, that passage says they were dormant as Bloodnames until the Refusal War . . . which is superseded by FMCC/WC which has asterisks next to Widowmaker heritages such as Ch'in?  Or Mehta?  I know FMWC talks about how the Warden Wolves have no Bloodnamed from one or two of those Houses and thus will not use the Bloodname for maternal donors though they have access to the genetics.

[Spirit Cat Refugee]

We know according to Flight of the Falcon Stone actually convinced the Clans they needed to pare down the # of active bloodnames even moreso because a warrior was "just that awesome" and elite, meaning reavings got even more intense. After the HPG net went down different Clans began reactivating more lines in preparation for invasions.

[Hellraiser]

So, that passage says they were dormant as Bloodnames until the Refusal War . . . which is superseded by FMCC/WC which has asterisks next to Widowmaker heritages such as Ch'in?  Or Mehta?  I know FMWC talks about how the Warden Wolves have no Bloodnamed from one or two of those Houses and thus will not use the Bloodname for maternal donors though they have access to the genetics.

Ch'in & Mehta are actually Wolf Bloodnames not Widowmaker
And they were not all dormant either, we examples active at least in the Invasion for Vickers, Conners, Leroux, & Sender from memory in the WCSB, maybe more.


Yeah, the WiE have a Blood Heritage count of just those that joined them.
So if they got 22 Kerensky's in 3058, then 22 is the max they will ever have basically.
At least that is how I understood it, but its been a while since I read it.

[Colt Ward]

Which is why I said that WoK was off as proven by FMWC & FMCC.  Some of those were Widowmakers.

As far as that . . . yes and now, Katya got Natasha's Bloodheritage.

[Hellraiser]

As far as that . . . yes and now, Katya got Natasha's Bloodheritage. 

Which Katya is that?

The only 2 I know are Katya Kerensky, Wife of Alexander, Mother of Nicky & Andery

Katya Kerensky, the Star Captain of 3050, later Delta Galaxy Commander, Crusader Wolf Lore Master, & Paladin of the Republic who had a Blood Name before Natasha returned to the clans?   

Neither was Wolf in Exile.   

Natasha died in the Refusal war so I'd say both halves could have claimed ownership of it.

I'm not up on MWDA fiction really, is there another Katya that got Natasha's Blood Name?

[Colt Ward]

No, I was getting my Invasion Wolves confused- it would be Ranna . . . went blank.

Natasha is a special case, but IF that was the reason then the Warden Wolves could have claimed any of the Refusal War fallen- FREX, who got Ulric's Heritage?  I imagine it would have been glorious among the Wardens and reduced among the Crusaders, though Vlad still gave him props for running circles around the Crusaders & leading the Invasion waves.

[Hellraiser]

No, I was getting my Invasion Wolves confused- it would be Ranna . . . went blank.

Natasha is a special case, but IF that was the reason then the Warden Wolves could have claimed any of the Refusal War fallen- FREX, who got Ulric's Heritage?  I imagine it would have been glorious among the Wardens and reduced among the Crusaders, though Vlad still gave him props for running circles around the Crusaders & leading the Invasion waves.

1.  Doh,  and I was thinking you were talking about someone in the future.
Yep, Ranna got Natashas.   Which is fine since if she had lived would likely have ended up going w/ the other survivors to Phelan.

2.  Well, in our campaign world in the 90's, I fought for it, ignoring what really happened............  (See sig below)
Which is that Ulric had been charged w/ Genocide/Treason & then lost the refusal war. 
Which means the name was permanently disgraced to the point that it was likely treated like similar names from the past......... IE... Wolverines 40,  that Viper Khan that loved Nicky, and a few others.   
Sooo, likely burned to dust or some other horrible outcome.  Which is sad.

The "Jade Wolves" survived that fate by being reborn from another clan after being captured, etc etc, /waves hands magic.
But Ulric didn't have that blessing.  His only hope was to win & then NOT have every other clan come back w/ follow up challenges which is what he'd already declared was going to happen.  Splitting the Wardens off was the only way to preserve the clan.  He was dead from the minute Dalk Carns opened his mouth w/o thinking of the long term repercussions of that charge.

And that is why Dalk Carns character is top of my list of hated Wolves,  Not Conal, Not Vlad,  no,  dumb arse Dalk is top of the idiot pile.

[rebs]

The Wolves also did not use all of the Widowmaker Bloodnames either- FREX, the guy that shot Nicky?  Yeah, not used.

As for tassa's question, I want to say it was those two books themselves.  I have to find FMWC after some boxes got moved.

Indeed.  Cal Jorgenson's heritage was probably destroyed. 

And the last Khan, Kyle Vordermark, who set the trap to try and kill as many Wolf warriors in any way possible regardless of honor, his heritage was probably tossed into a random crevasse on some unnamed moon somewhere.

Founding Khan Karige had his legacy destroyed before the Widowmaker absorption - officially in a "laboratory accident", probably at the orders of Nicky K himself I would bet.

[Hellraiser]

Indeed.  Cal Jorgenson's heritage was probably destroyed. 

And the last Khan, Kyle Vordermark, who set the trap to try and kill as many Wolf warriors in any way possible regardless of honor, his heritage was probably tossed into a random crevasse on some unnamed moon somewhere.

Founding Khan Karige had his legacy destroyed before the Widowmaker absorption - officially in a "laboratory accident", probably at the orders of Nicky K himself I would bet. 

As I posted upthread, per WoK all but 2 survived & were used by the Wolves.  To include Jorgenson

Despite this, the Widowmaker Bloodnames survived the aftermath (save for the Vordermark and Karrige Bloodnames) and live on within Clan Wolf.

[Colt Ward]

Except as I said, FMWC and FMCC counter that about less than that USED as bloodnames.  Their legacies live on, but they are not active bloodnames.

[Hellraiser]

Except as I said, FMWC and FMCC counter that about less than that USED as bloodnames.  Their legacies live on, but they are not active bloodnames.

And as I said above.  That is incorrect.  We have active bloodnames of Widowmaker lines before Vlad opened them up.

And they were not all dormant either, we examples active at least in the Invasion for Vickers, Conners, Leroux, & Sender from memory in the WCSB, maybe more.

There are Jorgensons listed in Falcon & Wolf.
These are not just paternal donner DNA like Natasha had, these are active heritages in Clan Wolf on the Rosters.

Not to mention the fact that prior to Vlad & the Jade Wolves, Ulric opened up every single "non-active" heritage that Wolves owned on a temporary basis for Operation Revival.

[rebs]

And I would posit that more than 2 widowmaker bloodlines are not used.  Lines that were reactivated can be deactivated as well. 

This is supported by many bloodnames seeing zero light of day in any sourcebook or fiction.

[tassa_kay]

As an aside, the Stone Lions actually have a Widowmaker Bloodname as an exclusive per WoR (Mutola, listed as General).

I dunno, I just thought that was kinda interesting. Carry on.  :D

[tassa_kay]

As I posted upthread, per WoK all but 2 survived & were used by the Wolves.  To include Jorgenson

Sarna is not correct in this particular case. WoK does not say that "all but 2 survived" and never calls out Karrige or Vordermark specifically (because neither of these characters existed when WoK was published).

What WoK actually says is this:

The Wolves likewise allowed three-quarters of Clan Widowmaker's Bloodnames to die out, though their genetic material lives on as part of other Bloodheritages.

This is noted alongside the Wolverines and the Mongoose lines that the Jaguars allowed to die out, noting that these three Clans account for 107 of the 118 "lost" Bloodnames (the total number of Bloodnames as of WoK's in-universe publication was 682), so we aren't talking about "inactive" Bloodnames, we're talking about gone Bloodnames.

If the Wolves only kept 25% of the Widowmakers' Bloodnames, that means that at most, they have 10 of them. OpKlondike contradicts this a bit, as there are a number of Widowmaker Bloodnames that are active in various products that take the total over 10 (Conners, Dubczeck, Herling, Juergens, Leroux, Meredith, Mutola, Nevski, Pletz, Rhyde, Sender, Ruby, Sanders, Vickers and possibly Jorgensson), but it's still close enough that I think WoK is still pretty accurate.

Not to mention the fact that prior to Vlad & the Jade Wolves, Ulric opened up every single "non-active" heritage that Wolves owned on a temporary basis for Operation Revival.

This is where it gets sticky.

WoK specifically says that the reactivation mechanism allowed for Clan Wolf to field a thousand Bloodnamed warriors, the maximum allowed to each Clan, during the invasion (and also that most of them weren't renewed after Tukayyid). A thousand Bloodnamed warriors means that the Wolves could field 40 total Bloodnames with a full 25 Bloodnamed warriors each (and this is just accounting for the Wolves' own original Bloodnames, minus their 3 extras). Every Widowmaker Bloodname reactivated would mean one less Wolf Bloodname being reactivated (otherwise the Wolves would exceed the mandated total), but I could see the Wolves prioritizing Widowmaker Bloodnames that perform well over Wolf Bloodnames that don't.

And I would posit that more than 2 widowmaker bloodlines are not used.  Lines that were reactivated can be deactivated as well.

WoK would suggest that you're right, rebs. It says that most of the reactivated lines were deactivated again after Tukayyid.

There are Jorgensons listed in Falcon & Wolf.
These are not just paternal donner DNA like Natasha had, these are active heritages in Clan Wolf on the Rosters.

Having a couple of Jorgenssons in the Wolf ranks doesn't prove anything; they could be abtakha from the Ghost Bears for all we know. The Falcons have a Bloodnamed Koga, a Bloodnamed Kabrinski and a Bloodnamed McKenna in their ranks in the same book, and those are exclusive Coyote/Ghost Bear/Snow Raven Bloodnames respectively, so the precedent is certainly there.

There's just no reality in which one could ever convince me that the Wolves didn't flush the genetic legacy of the man who killed Nicholas Kerensky down the nearest toilet. I mean, what Wolf warrior is going to want to fight for a Bloodname that belonged to the man that murdered the Founder? It makes absolutely no sense to me. (Though, to be fair, Cal Jorgensson was created long after F&W, so I'm just gonna blame FASA and be done with it, lol.)

[wantec]

(Though, to be fair, Cal Jorgensson was created long after F&W, so I'm just gonna blame FASA and be done with it, lol.)

Cal Jorgensson was in the Wolf Clan Sourcebook, in the Death and Absorption section on pg 22.

[Hellraiser]

And I would posit that more than 2 widowmaker bloodlines are not used.  Lines that were reactivated can be deactivated as well. 

This is supported by many bloodnames seeing zero light of day in any sourcebook or fiction.

Yes, but you can't instantly reactivate a line that is completely dead, by either
1.  The DNA was destroyed
2.  The house has been allowed to go to 0 active heritages.

No house is going get used "Matrilineally" for generations but NOT have even a single heritage active for those Warriors to fight for.
I'm just not seeing that happen at all.

So when Ulric re-activated the heritages, there had to be an existing pool of warriors that were around to compete for those names.
Maybe they were down to 5 Heritages in use instead of 25, but you still had to have an active pool of Matrilineally bread warriors for those blood houses.

You "could" suddenly start up a sibko program from scratch, in theory, and then 20 years from now have warriors able to fight.
But that isn't what he did.

You could also back things up 2-3 centuries & go out to the Paternal Lines scattered around & suddenly allow those warriors to test for a different name, but that wasn't mentioned at all & hasn't been done since the first generation of canister babies was made.

Point is, there is a world of difference between full on letting a name die out & no longer used Matrilineally at all, v/s letting the blood count drop down to under 10.
Which is what I think the line Tassa quoted actually means.
Its not that 3/4 of the Names were left to die out, its that 3/4 of the "heritages", were allowed to fall to inactive use.
So each Blood Name was running around with 6-ish (25/4) active blood named instead of 25.
Some probably did die, 2 for sure, but I doubt it was 30

[Hellraiser]

This is noted alongside the Wolverines and the Mongoose lines that the Jaguars allowed to die out, noting that these three Clans account for 107 of the 118 "lost" Bloodnames (the total number of Bloodnames as of WoK's in-universe publication was 682), so we aren't talking about "inactive" Bloodnames, we're talking about gone Bloodnames.

If the Wolves only kept 25% of the Widowmakers' Bloodnames, that means that at most, they have 10 of them. OpKlondike contradicts this a bit, as there are a number of Widowmaker Bloodnames that are active in various products that take the total over 10 (Conners, Dubczeck, Herling, Juergens, Leroux, Meredith, Mutola, Nevski, Pletz, Rhyde, Sender, Ruby, Sanders, Vickers and possibly Jorgensson), but it's still close enough that I think WoK is still pretty accurate.

2 Clans give you 80,  27 for the Widowmakers means 13 were still in use. 
Your list has quite a few and I'm not able to go searching 40 names in every book that's in storage.
But there are clearly a bunch still in use if I know them by sight.

This is where it gets sticky.

WoK specifically says that the reactivation mechanism allowed for Clan Wolf to field a thousand Bloodnamed warriors, the maximum allowed to each Clan, during the invasion (and also that most of them weren't renewed after Tukayyid). A thousand Bloodnamed warriors means that the Wolves could field 40 total Bloodnames with a full 25 Bloodnamed warriors each (and this is just accounting for the Wolves' own original Bloodnames, minus their 3 extras). Every Widowmaker Bloodname reactivated would mean one less Wolf Bloodname being reactivated (otherwise the Wolves would exceed the mandated total), but I could see the Wolves prioritizing Widowmaker Bloodnames that perform well over Wolf Bloodnames that don't. 

If BoK Trilogy can note 600 instead of 800  (Actually 803),  then I think its fair to say that the 1000 is based on 200*25 being the "Norm" and is likely a typo just like the 600 was & that the Wolves can field as many as they are allotted,  IE,   25 * (40+3+Widowmakers) lines,  or 1400-ish if that 13 figured up above is right.
I've never seen anything in print that says that Clans that have absorbed another are still limited to 40 names.

[Colt Ward]

I would not take it as any deactivated name was used, but rather some like . . . well, say McKibben (shared w/Coyotes) going from 15 active heritages to 25.  The problem with that is the shared Bloodnames would mean members of the other Clans could end up with the Bloodname which leaves them out of the Invasion.

Some of this using WCSB and WoK comes down to bad/partial early Clan knowledge.

[Mendrugo]

Looking at the post-3100 time period, the Edict of Severance essentially reset things for the Inner Sphere Clans, and allowed any Trueborn whose Bloodhouse leaders had been left behind in the Homeworlds to found a new Bloodhouse based on either their matrilineal or patrilineal line.  Given that option, there's a chance that plenty of Bloodname-hungry Trueborns would jump at the opportunity to head their own Bloodhouse based on the previously off-limits patrilineal legacy, even if their matrilineal Bloodhouse had relocated to the Inner Sphere.

[tassa_kay]

Cal Jorgensson was in the Wolf Clan Sourcebook, in the Death and Absorption section on pg 22.

Well, in lieu of WCSB or F&W outright saying that their two Jorgenssons on the rolls are based on Cal, I'm going to assume they're abtakha, because the Wolves using the Bloodname of the man who murdered the Founder simply makes no sense.

Point is, there is a world of difference between full on letting a name die out & no longer used Matrilineally at all, v/s letting the blood count drop down to under 10.
Which is what I think the line Tassa quoted actually means.

That's not what it means at all. It specifically says their Bloodnames were left to die out, and their genetic material was used elsewhere.

If BoK Trilogy can note 600 instead of 800  (Actually 803),  then I think its fair to say that the 1000 is based on 200*25 being the "Norm" and is likely a typo just like the 600 was & that the Wolves can field as many as they are allotted,  IE,   25 * (40+3+Widowmakers) lines,  or 1400-ish if that 13 figured up above is right.

It's not a typo. WoK is a newer source of canon and was vetted better than FASA's early work.

The whole "thousand warriors" thing is based on the Clan's own 'default' Bloodname count (40 Bloodnames times 25 Bloodheritages). The addition of the Widowmaker Bloodnames is what makes the whole thing dicey, because it doesn't account for that.

I've never seen anything in print that says that Clans that have absorbed another are still limited to 40 names.

That's not what I was trying to say. I was saying that they're limited to a thousand Bloodnamed warriors. Whether it's by maximizing their own Bloodcounts for their 40 (+3) Bloodnames, or a mixture of their own and the Widowmakers' (which is what I think they actually did, given that we have confirmed Bloodnamed warriors with Widowmaker Bloodnames), they're still limited to a thousand.

[Hellraiser]

because the Wolves using the Bloodname of the man who murdered the Founder simply makes no sense.

He claimed it was not intentional, but ok.

It's not a typo. The whole "thousand warriors" thing is based on the Clan's own 'default' Bloodname count (40 Bloodnames times 25 Bloodheritages). The addition of the Widowmaker Bloodnames is what makes the whole thing dicey, because it doesn't account for that.

It's a logical conclusion based on the fact that the entire limit on active Bloodheritages/Bloodcounts is meant to be a check on the Clans growing too powerful and disrupting the delicate balance of power that they require to function without eating each other.

Its not a logical conclusion at all that once you absorb a clan that you have to let your own blood houses wither to use what you absorbed.
Under that rational, given enough time & internal dissent (War of Reavings) you would eventually end up with only 1 surviving clan that is then down to only 40 bloodnames most of which they wouldn't have started with. 
I'm not seeing that what Nicky intended, for an already microscopic warrior population to wither even further till they were basically extinct.

[tassa_kay]

He claimed it was not intentional, but ok.

Whether it was intentional or not is completely irrelevant. He still killed Nicholas Kerensky. And the Wolves made a point to destroy the Widowmakers over it.

Its not a logical conclusion at all that once you absorb a clan that you have to let your own blood houses wither to use what you absorbed.
Under that rational, given enough time & internal dissent (War of Reavings) you would eventually end up with only 1 surviving clan that is then down to only 40 bloodnames most of which they wouldn't have started with. 

It's almost like Nicholas Kerensky didn't intend or foresee the Clans eating each other alive during the Wars of Reaving to be able to account for something like that. ;)