Editing Clan Invasion (section)

== Prelude ==
In Clan space in the early 31st century, after two centuries of growth, there was a fracture in the culture of the [[The Clans|Clans]]. While they'd always had their own little traditions that they'd been adhering to, two philosophies on the Clans' ultimate stated goal of returning to the Inner Sphere had emerged: the ''Wardens'', and the ''Crusaders''. The Wardens took a moderate approach, seeing themselves as the silent, watchful guardians of the Inner Sphere, and didn't feel the need to charge ahead to go in and fix everything at gunpoint. On the other hand, the Crusaders saw it as the supreme duty of the Clans to return to the Inner Sphere, conquer Terra and subjugate the backwards Spheroids. Additionally, the Crusader movement had a strong support base from the civilian castes due to the Inner Sphere being seen as a resource rich  Promised Land in contrast to the resource-deprived worlds in the Deep Periphery. Over time, increasing pressure by the Crusader Faction to return to the Inner Sphere and restore the [[Star League]], as promised by the Kerenskys centuries ago, had begun to mount. The Warden faction had managed to stall efforts through various means, from sending the Wolf's Dragoons to spy on the Inner Sphere, to simple trials of refusal, to emphasizing Clanner politics, to simple matters of logistics. Given that even the [[Capellan Confederation]] still outnumbered the totality of the Clans by a significant margin, these were reasonable arguments to make for the Wardens, and if they were going to attack the Inner Sphere, they needed to be in top of the line shape and have the ratio narrowed. Nevertheless, both sides of the Clanner aisle kept badgering each other about the issue before things came to a head in 3048.

One of [[ComStar]]'s many side projects was the Explorer Corps, a fleet which probed beyond the [[The_Periphery|Periphery]], in part to see what happened to the Exodus Fleet. The Explorer Corps ship ''Outbound Light'' eventually found the answer to that question in the worst way possible: having stumbled not only upon Clanspace, but sprcifically the capital system of [[Clan Smoke Jaguar]] (who were both staunch Crusaders and even stauncher assholes), their ship was captured and they were cordially invited to participate in a few friendly rounds of enhanced interrogation. Using the information and selectively choosing key pieces of info from ComStar's database, Smoke Jaguar told the council that the Inner Sphere had found them, were on the verge of creating their own faux Star League under the Federated Commonwealth and would inevitably launch an invasion of Clan space. Clearly, it was the time to act.

Of course, that meant that there needed to be an all-out tournament arc among the seventeen Clans to determine who actually got to go invading the Inner Sphere, as is Clan tradition. To them, politics and military strategy both involve the same practice of ritual combat. The only Clan guaranteed to participate in the invasion was [[Clan Wolf|Clan Wolf]], which (surprisingly) made almost everyone happy: for the Wardens, it meant that Kerensky's Bloodname would finally return to the Inner Sphere as the rightful ilKhan and rebuild the Star League; for the Crusaders, most of whom didn't care for Clan Wolf's moderating (read: overwhelming and often brutal) Warden presence, it felt like appropriate retribution after forcing them to wait so goddamn long.

After two days of bidding, a number of combat trials began among six Clan finalists, which were then whittled down into Smoke Jaguar, [[Clan Ghost Bear|Ghost Bear]], and [[Clan Jade Falcon|Jade Falcon]], all of whom would follow Clan Wolf into the Inner Sphere along three separate corridors in order to conquer enough worlds to destabilize the Inner Sphere and conquer Terra. The remaining Clans would be coming in waves behind them, but often found they were sending more vanguard than even the first wave was expecting to bring as their warriors became overexcited.