...
(... which made me wonder why the hell the combine thought they'd get a different result when trying the same strategy against the Wolf's Dragoons in 3028, against a unit far larger and more skilled.)...
200 years is a fair amount of time to get stupid again. Honestly, I would think the situation in the League would have made Samsonov think about 20 times before trying to pull that stunt off. That's a bit more pointed a lesson.
Isn't one a nation state in exile and the other a moderately successful mid sized corporate entity?
Wouldn't Clan Wolverine inherently absorb the ELH? It is hard to avoid the Wolverines as the senior partner and that offers nothing to ELH.
It depends on how "hidden" they wanted to remain. They likely would not have liked the idea of word of them returning to the groups they just left. Even the Warden Wolves would not have held back much in a return just to get at them.
Internally is another matter. They would have to take on the image and practices of the ELH (and to be fair, the Minnesota Tribe isn't THAT far removed from the Exodus when compared to the Dragoons) so that wouldn't be that difficult to do. Even as it is, the Coordinator at the time thought the Minnesota were the Exodus returning.
Would the ELH welcome the Wolverine survivors?
Quite possibly, even likely. I would think they would accept any SLDF patriots back in to the fold, really. Even if they are a generation or two away from the Exodus, the mystique would help, almost as much as their equipment.
Would they New ELH have alerted any of the Great Houses of the threat that lurked in the Deep Periphery?
That's a good question. I think it would depend on how well they got along with the Houses. There is a chance they likely might not to both protect the incorporated Tribe and to cover any chances of being targeted by unsavory types who might want revenge on Exodus units.
Speaking of which:
How would Comstar react?
If they came in stealthily and joined up without doing extensive raiding, Comstar would probably only start acting due to the ELH's sudden increase in size and quality of equipment. From there, it would largely depend on how loose-lipped some of the personnel were and how quickly integration took hold. I could see Comstar leading them in to some traps that would maul the new unit as much as possible, just in case. These would be of a pattern that the Grey Death Legion would face 200 years later.
Would Wolf's Dragoons appearance have led to an ELH response, realizing who and what the Dragoons likely were?
This assumes that any such knowledge would have been retained over the 200 years of integration, especially for units that take on tricky combat contracts that often lead to dead leaders in normal situations. When you get sneaky Space Ma Bell involved, this becomes more likely over 200 years.
Provided that they stayed alive, coherent, strong, and retaining knowledge of the Clans, they likely would have suspected and sought contracts to either fight against them or to fight alongside them to pick up anything that would betray their Clan idiosyncrasies. Still, a lot of things can change over 200 years, and some of those things that were Clan in the 2800s just didn't quite exist in the same way as they did in the 3000s, so the Wolfs might have been able to keep their origin from being confirmed (but the suspicion never allayed).
If they could confirm they were Clan, BUT with Warden tendencies, they might even seek to hook up and work together in keeping the Clans away.
If they confirmed they were Clan, but either identified them as Wolf or never confirmed their Warden preferences, then one would probably seen them taking on contracts to destroy the Dragoons out of fear of being discovered as having Wolverine descendants among them.
This scenario would seem more likely, and unless Comstar had managed to maul the ELH over the centuries, they would be among the few units that could handle anti-Dragoon assignments (and often did, in the original time line).
