Clan Smoke Jaguar

Clan Smoke Jaguar is a Clan in the Battletech universe, notable for being a bunch of super aggressive assholes.

History

Clan Smoke Jaguar was created in 2807 and fell under the command of Franklin Osis, a man of Federated Suns background who had been caught up in a Davion/Liao expat conflict before going to Strana Mechty. This and the death of his Brother had left the guy serious anger management issues. During Operation KLONDIKE they invaded Eden and were brutal in their suppression of the civilian populations. Never the less, he did push his Clan to feats of Martial excellence.

Afterwards, they established the planet Huntress as their Homeworld and sought to make their name through combat whenever possible. Smoke Jaguar Absorbed Clan Mongoose in 2868 after they got into one fight too many. Where other Clans might use diplomacy and trade to get something they wanted, Smoke Jaguar's first option was always to throw down.

An infamous incident happened on the Smoke Jaguar held planet of Londerholm in 2912 when a blight wiped out much of the root crop which made up the bulk of the diet for much of the civilian castes. In response, the Smoke Jaguar Clan Council reserved much of the remaining harvest for warrior consumption and kept up food exports¹. Famine broke out and when various groups resisted, the Smoke Jaguar Warriors came down hard wiping out a good chunk of their civilians for daring to want food when they were starving, though a few lucky rebels managed to defect to other Clans. In the aftermath the rights of the civilian castes were largely stripped. Numerous other Clans called out the Smoke Jaguars over this pointless dickery in the Grand Council. Smoke Jaguar Khan Ian Moon replied that this was a strictly internal matter and that intervention would set a precedent which would threaten their autonomy in the future (with the specific implication that they'd leverage it against their opponents). This was enough to keep the Grand Council from getting involved, but the victory won them no friends to say the least.

In the end, Clan Smoke Jaguar's aggressiveness and inability to form well established alliances with other Clans and their Spheroid subjects made them a target for the Second Star League. Left on their own by the other Clans, their homeworlds were conquered by the Second Star League and the last of their warriors were defeated during the Great Refusal. However, some survivors were able to form a remote colony and remake themselves before the Republic of the Sphere made a bargain with them to let them settle near Terra in exchange for personal loyalty to the Republic's leader as the Fidelis, a personal special forces group with fanatical training and hatred of the Clans. Once the Third Star League was formed over the Republic's ashes, the IlClan reformed the Clan as reward for aiding them (due to internecine politicking among the Republic's factions, the Fidelis got disillusioned with the Exarch prior to the IlClan forming) and surrender while offering them intelligence on Terra's defenses.

¹ This hits the same notes as the Irish Potato Famine

Culture

More than any other Clan, Smoke Jaguar believed firmly in the principle that Might Makes Right. The Warriors dominate and the rest obey. At least, in theory, anyway.

In reality, Clan Smoke Jaguar were just unilateral assholes. Assholes from the top all the way to the bottom due to their sheer ferocity and fury, which is instilled early. Those in the Warrior Caste were not just given extremely preferential treatment, but also impossibly high standards for their Warriors, especially their "trueborn" Warriors, to the point that they actively drummed "Freeborn" Warriors straight out of their Toumans and all Warriors in the Clan left were exceptionally paranoid, brutish, and suspicious of themselves and others. Those assholes would then take out their anger issues on pretty much any civilian caste member for any perceived transgressions; real or imagined. This would then create resentment among their Civilian castes to the point that active inter-caste rebellion has been a major part of Smoke Jaguar's history, which would only create a further deepening spiral between the Warriors and Non-Warrior classes as the years went on.

Smoke Jaguars were not just built on war, their only real propelling force in life was war. When Smoke Jaguar wasn't in some form of pissing contest, it was usually on it's way towards collapse. Since their civilians were treated like crap all the time, the Smoke Jaguar economy was noticeably weaker than that of the other Clans, and the only way to keep the Clan from actively dissolving on it's own was to keep the war flowing. It shouldn't be terribly surprising then that Smoke Jaguar was not just the catalyst, but the leading force in the Crusader school of thought in Clan politics, and got the incredible stroke of luck in finding the ComStar exploratory group that would allow them to facilitate the beginning of the Clan Invasion. Had they known just what would happen to them afterwards...well, they probably still would've done it.

Really, the biggest failing of Smoke Jaguar's entire culture was not only that they believed the Clan way of life to be the superior way of doing things, but that Smoke Jaguar's particular brand of jackassery alone held the key to Clanner success. While not a unique position among the Clans to think one's own clan was the best, Smoke Jaguar took it a step further by alienating even other Crusader clans due to their pathological need to prove their warriors were the best, and only ever had alliances of convenience in the best of times and held deep generational grudges across multiple clans at worst, which ultimately led to their complete annihilation because they had ultimately painted a target on their backs from the Clan Invasion, and relatively little skill in politiking their way out of the Trial of Refusal.

While they were hidden away as the Fidelis, their surviving warriors (who had been taken bondsmen while their Clan had been annihilated) wizened up. Realizing that the Warrior Caste's extreme focus on only martial affairs as well as inability to work with allies smoothly as a weakness, they reformed their society to have their warriors have extensive cross training across multiple technical and military disciplines while making the caste system more flexible to enable personal freedoms to excel. Whether this development as their time as the Fidelis remains when they reverted back to becoming a Clan under Clan Wolf's Third Star League remains unclear.

Notable Mechs

• Ebon Jaguar (Cauldron-Born) - The Clan at one point needed a hard upgrade on their aging Hellbringer Omnimechs, and their scientists drummed up this monstrosity of an OmniMech: it ended up being tough as two-dollar steak and twice as deadly. The Inner Sphere name of "Cauldron-Born" was a direct reference to the nearly impossible to kill irish zombies of yore. Believe it or not, they're actually more known as Cauldron-Born rather than Ebon Jaguars because of their secretive development; the other Clans only learned about it's existence after it's first battles, and have been proliferating that name more than it's intended one. The Ebon Jaguar is a long-range punisher in it's base configuration, with every further config being just more and more unpleasant with each passing moment.
• Iron Cheetah - While not actually a "Totem Mech" as the Clans would come to call them, the Iron Cheetah is instead a testament to both the ferociousness of Smoke Jaguar society and also a great example of why they absolutely couldn't be trusted with anything more complicated than warfare. the Iron Cheetah is Smoke Jaguar's last gasp of relevance before their annihilation during the Wars of Refusal. Their intent was to create a faster version of the massive but plodding Dire Wolf, that would be able to lead assaults while also acting as a suitable transport for Elementals. They succeeded, creating a brutal 100 ton sniper mech with the speed of an Inner Sphere heavy mech and no slouch on armor. Aesthetically, the mech is a Dire Wolf with a head more like the Timber Wolf's. Fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, only a small number of these expensive behemoths were produced before the Clan's fall.
• Stone Rhino (Behemoth) - The Smoke Jaguars' final "fuck you" to the late Rim Worlds Republic, by succeeding where Amaris failed and making a functional weapon of death out of the failed Matar superheavy. While it's slow as hell, its two Gauss Rifles will shred anything in their range. Also, unlike Amaris' Folly, the Stone Rhino's legs are fully functional and even have Jump Jets.
• Warhawk (Masakari) - The evil twin brother of the Timber Wolf, the Warhawk was well-known for cleaving through the Draconis Combine during the Clan Invasion faster than the axe it was known for. It's gutpunch of being able to volley fire four PPCs without immediately melting down made it such a powerful 'Mech that Smoke Jaguar was very loathe to part with any of them. In a bizarre twist for OmniMechs, it's base configuration was actually the most specialized; most of the other configs are generalist patterns that trade out the PPCs for something else.