Editing Clan Wolverine (section)

== Origins in Clan Space ==
[[File:Sarah-mcevedy.png|thumb|300px|left|McEvedy, McEvedy. There's no one like McEvedy...]]

Like the other Clans, Clan Wolverine was put together in 2807 from those SLDF forces which went with Nicholas Kerensky to Strana Mechty in the Second Exodus instead of engaging in the Pentagon Civil War. In this case, Sarah McEvedy, a reformist, was installed as Khan and who'd develop issues with the way Nicky did things. During Operation KLONDIKE the Wolverines invaded the planet Circe, where she pushed against the limited rules of engagement by taking a flexible and liberal interpretation of Clan combat rules such as artillery barrages and mass targeting to overcome overwhelming enemy numbers over one-on-on dueling. Tensions would continue to grow from there. After the Pentagon Worlds were taken by the Clans, she allowed a greater degree of mobility between the Castes increasing food production in the territory that was portioned out to the Wolverines, which was seen as as a threat to Nicholas' new vision. Additionally, the clan began creating new BattleMech designs that were more competitive than the SLDF vintage that most Clans had; making many of them feel threatened. 

It should be noted that McEvedy and the Wolverines were not the only people among the Clans which harbored doubts about the rather extreme course things had taken though she was the most brazen about it. While some Clans, such as the Sea Foxes, did have less rigid hierarchies and enabled modest caste transfers, Warriors still remained firmly in control. The biggest issue as far as Kerensky was concerned would be the Wolverines rallying the dissenters and threatening the society which he was forming. As such, he had the Wolverines singled out for daring to openly challenge his new vision on society and permitted the other Clan Khans to spy on them. This only made matters worse with mutual animosity rising and taking place of the listlessness that most Clansmen faced with no external enemies left in Clan space.

The final straw which broke the camel's back was that a cache of SLDF equipment including Nuclear Weapons was found in Wolverine Territory. McEvedy wanted to keep these for herself while the other Clanners wanted in on them. There was a Trial of Refusal, the Wolverines lost. Never the less, McEvedy refused to give up the nukes and fought to keep them. Knowing that a Trial of Absorption was all but guaranteed with every Clan out to attack them until they were worn ragged, McEvedy began planning contingencies. On October 11th, 2823 she denounced Nicky in the Grand Council, declared independence and stormed off.

=== Annihilation ===
A civil war broke and Clan Snow Raven's capital city was destroyed with a nuclear warhead; damaging their genetic repository. Officially, Clan Wolverine detonated nuclear weapons on pro-Kerensky civilians out of spite in their own capital just as the IlKhan was within range as an observer for the Trial of Absorbtion. They then apparently launched nukes at Clan Snow Raven due to being their closest neighboring Clan. Unofficially, the Clan Widowmaker Khan (who held a personal grudge against the Wolverines since their early days over some personal slight) framed them by detonating a hidden nuke. The Snow Raven disaster was sadly an accident from a warhead-laden aerospace fighter being hit while targeting the Wolverines amidst the chaos in retaliation for the apparent nuking of civilians; resulting in the nuke veering off-target. 

Seeing how the apparent nuclear attacks violated the Clan taboo of avoiding collateral damage to useful civilians, an assassination attempt at IlKhan Nicholas himself, and poisoning a Clan’s genes with WMD’s (i.e. a genocide), Clan Wolverine was marked as irredeemable and Nicky was provoked into escalating the Absorption into a Trial of Annihilation against them. Fighting was brutal with both sides engaged in a genocidal total war. No quarter was offered for warriors while Wolverine civilians would be sterilized at best to avoid “tainting the gene-pool.” 

They put up a good fight but the Wolverines were outnumbered 19-1 and the rest of the Clans were not holding back. Despite this, the Wolverine's plans were not to stand and fight but rather to flee. Fearing that it would come to this, McEvedy had prepared a fleet for evacuation beforehand and managed to get much of her people, gear, and population off world after a scorched earth campaign in what was called Operation SWITCHBACK. Much of that was destroyed at a world named Babardos. At the end of the battle, the Widowmaker Khan later got secretly executed by the Wolverines SaKhan, Franklin Hallis, with tacit approval from Kerensky (who merely wanted to absorb rather than annihilate the Wolverines as a lesson) in a secluded encirclement by the other Clans' Khans before being executed himself. After the Widowmaker duplicity was exposed to the Clan's top leaders, Kerensky erased the Widowmaker Khan’s genes from their eugenics program and enacted a coverup to avoid something on par with the Wars of Reaving tearing Clan Space apart. But Wolverine survivors managed to regroup and flee towards the Inner Sphere as planned.

=== Aftermath ===
To the Clans, the Wolverines became a cultural anathema. Most records were destroyed and what remained was a mostly mythologized account of the Wolverines’ betrayal of the Clans and everything they stood for; seeking to fall back into the ways which laid waste to both the Inner Sphere and Star-League-In-Exile while willing to burn anyone in their way like the original SLDF’s meltdown in the Pentagon Civil Wars. Calling a Clanner a Wolverine is like calling the great grandchild of a Holocaust Survivor a Nazi, now imagine that said person was also raised to be a warrior in a highly militarized honor culture in which the approved way of solving disputes is trial by combat. When the Clans began building IIC variants of the Wolverine model of BattleMech (a time tested medium design that been in production for more than two centuries prior to the Exodus that just happened to be named after the same overgrown weasel), they renamed it the Conjurer. Much of what remained of Clan Wolverine was gobbled up by Clan Wolf. Ironically, the less rigid interpretation of caste mobility (with transfers of those tested and deemed competent), some of their economic reforms, and the Wolverine BattleMech designs would also be adopted with some duplicity.  In the case of the third point, some of the first OmniMechs, such as the Coyotl and Kingfisher, would be based off of the Clan Wolverine’s Mercury II and Pulverizer. This might have been driven in part by a guilty conscience as the Clans’ leadership knew the truth.  In addition, Clan Wolf and the Clan Council would punish the Widowmakers years later for massacring their protesting merchant caste over a trade dispute (and possibly in revenge for escalating things with the Wolverines) with a Trial of Absorption (that ironically killed Nicholas & drove the Wolves into a frenzy that left barely any Widowmaker warriors alive).

While a costly affair in terms of human lives and materiel, the destruction and subsequent anathemization of the Wolverines would be an important step in the consolidation of the Clans. First and most directly it effectively silenced overt opposition to Nicky's new societal model in the remaining 19 Clans. There were still former Star League Clanners at this stage who disagreed with Nicky, including those in positions of power, but after the most brazen display of defiance was stomped out they soon learned to hold their tongues and worked within the system. Additionally the open secret that survivors escaped served as a cultural boogie-man to keep the average Clanner straightened out and in line. For generations which would be born or decanted in Clan Space, the villainy of the Not-Named-Clan would reinforce the social-structure. The Clans are a culture which is based on Traditionalism and a Mythic Narrative; so having a villain who was of the Clans but broke with their traditions was a prime pillar reinforcing that story. In particular driving home the need to both keep with tradition and clamp down against Unclanike heterodoxy. This focus on conformity to Clan Culture served to be a double edged sword that kept the Clan Homeworlds stable while in isolation up until forced adaptation, petty jealousy, and perceived ideological compromises from exposure to Spheroid tactics during the [[Clan Invasion]] tore the Clans apart during the [[Wars of Reaving]].