They do seem to overly caught up in the day-to-day Trials and survival of the Kindraa. They don't have a tremendous amount of reserve warriors in quiet garrisons or extra industry. So the average Fire Mandrill warrior is fighting more battles/Trials, and is more just caught up in that day-to-day high level of activity than perhaps warriors in some other Clans.
I say that because of a line in the Fire Mandrill Kindraa clashing life path. Which, to paraphrase says something like "Other Clan warriors view quiet periods where there is no Trials as something to fear. You have never known such a thing, there is always another Trial to fight."
That line speaks a lot about the day-to-day existence of a Fire Mandrill warrior. There's no quiet garrison Cluster backwater. There's no Clusters that get pulled off active duty to train and rebuild for months. When Aidan Pryde reformed the Falcon Guards they were pulled from active duty and allowed to train as a unit for a while before being put into service. The Mandrill clusters don't appear to have that option. They just keep your unit deployed full time, and Trials (offense or defense) can come at any time.
The Kindraas are just too small, militarily, to do anything else. I do think that probably stifles a lot of medium- and long-term planning.
But that isn't because they are "kill crazy." It is because they don't have the reserve capacity to do anything else but stick to that day-to-day survival and success focus. They need "all hands on deck" all the time. Just to survive. When you are stuck in that day-to-day mindset it is very difficult to take a step back and do anything else. I imagine day-to-day existence for Mandrill warriors is quite physically and mentally exhausting, and the best they can hope for is to get some food and sleep and minimal R&R before the next scramble alert.
Honestly for most of the eras that we get to know the Fire Mandrills, in my eyes they are hanging on to life by their finger nails and just one big disaster away from crippling the Kindraa and prompting them to merge with other Kindraa to continue to survive. It's because of that.
It's also clear that this is how most of the other Clans perceive the Mandrills. They look at them as this Clan that is doomed to fail. That it's not a question of "if" but "when" they fail. They aren't wrong. There are hints that they could do better, that is what Khan Amanda Carrol was trying to achieve in her time in office. But then she's out and they go back to the downward slide.
Kindraa Faraday-Tanaga is the notable departure from that. They have this reputation for being almost stoic, often quiet, contemplative. Their reputation is that of long-term planners. They also don't seem to get dragged into many of the conflicts of the 3050s through to the start of the WoR era. They are oddly quiet. But that also means they avoid some of the battlefield disasters that befall many of the other Kindraa that causes them to consolidate with other Kindraa in that era. But then disaster befalls them anyway in the WoR era. They just get chewed up by events beyond their control.
For the Mandrills as a whole, their internal teamwork is probably excellent. Internal as in trothkin and fellow members of the Kindraa (and the Kindraa being much smaller than a Clan, it's probably easier to get to know a lot of your fellow Kindraa warriors fairly well). It is the people outside of that which they get prickly with.
The Blood Spirits have that same attribute. Strong internal ties, prickly and untrusting to outsiders. That explains a lot about why that diplomatic friendship moved toward progress, but very very slowly. That's reflected in some attitudes in writing in the Blood Spirit section of FM: CC. Which shows some individuals, I think members of one Galaxy in particular, were advocates of a closer relationship with the Fire Mandrills. But at the same time many others continued to espouse that isolationist attitude. So, it's a very gradual relationship that builds slowly and probably with plenty of people on both sides saying they should NOT be friends.
But both Clans are resource poor, stretched thin, and don't have a lot of friends. So, in truth they they don't have a lot to offer each other. A few joint R&D projects, a little sharing of their already slim resources. It's an incremental improvement. It's not game-changing for either of them.
What the Mandrills REALLY needed was a powerful friend, not a weak friend.
We see the Cloud Cobras, a Clan with a relatively small touman (Like the Mandrills), join forces with the 3-way "Snake Clan Alliance". They ultimately survive. That's the kind of network the Mandrills needed to survive. Something like that, strong alliances with powerful Clans. Not 1 alliance with 1 resource poor Clan.
If they had managed an alliance with the Star Adders, much like the Cobras, and much like the Stone Lions, who came under their protection, the Fire Mandrills (or some portion of them) might still exist. IMO
