Clan Diamond Shark

Clan Diamond Shark (AKA Clan Sea Fox at various points in it's history) is a Clan in the Battletech universe.

History

Originally created as Clan Sea Fox in 2807, this clan was put under the command of Karen Nagasawa. A woman who was the child of several SLDF officers and been raised in SLDF facilities during the Ameris Civil War, was a teenager during the Exodus and tried to hold things together when Star League In Exile began to fall apart. She had signed on with Nicky during the exodus to try to salvage some semblance of order, but remained idealistic. She was also a prominent orator and writer and played a major role in propagating the nascent ideology of The Clans. During Operation KLONDIKE, the Sea Foxes invaded Babylon. After the war, she would do what she could within the system to try to make it as equitable as possible for it's populace on the quiet without rocking the boat too much. Given what happened to the more overtly defiant this was a logical course of action.

Like many other Clans Clan Sea Fox was named for a critter native to the Clan Homeworlds, in this case a Sea Otter analog. In 2984, Clan Snow Raven did a dick move and genetically engineered a species of super sharks to hunt the critters into extinction. In spite of this, the response of Clan Sea Fox was to rename themselves to Clan Diamond Shark. That said, they also saved some Sea Foxes and relocated them to new homes. In 3100 they changed it back to Sea Fox.

Culture

The most notable fact about Clan Diamond Shark/Sea Fox is that it is probably the least Martial of the Clans. The Warrior Caste remains prominent, but it does not dominate. The Civilian Castes have a greater say in not only their day to day lives than in most Clans, but also in the course the Clan takes as a whole and in particular the Merchant Caste is often in the driver's seat. The distinction between Warriors and Civilians is also less cut and dry as instead of signing up to be suicidal cannon fodder, Diamond Shark/Sea Fox warriors can honorably retire to the civilian castes. While "retired" Warriors are required to retest to maintain their warrior credentials if war occurs, most are happily willing to swap their Warrior beret for a Merchant's cape and vice versa when the situation calls for it. Naturally it's outlook has always tended to be more Economic than most and they're damn good at it. Clan Diamond Shark/Sea Fox set up and ran the HPG network in Clan Space, operated a major media empire and maintained major trade network between Clans. These tendencies were maximized after the Battle of Tukayyid, in which the Diamond Shark warrior Caste was decimated.

Other Clanners do tend to look down on the the Diamond Sharks/Sea Foxes as being Un-Clanlike for pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior. On the other hand; Diamond Shark/Sea Fox could outright buy whole Toumans of warriors if they wanted to, and their tendencies to go with the flow, pick their battles carefully, and not stir up trouble usually ensures they are not seen as a pressing enemy by most, but when properly assed into a fight, Clan Diamond Shark/Sea Fox acquit themselves well.

Organization and Disposition

The Clans had always enjoyed a somewhat mixed reception with Battletech fans, but one of the main problems with writing them is that there were just too damn many of them. The characterization of several of the less popular Clans was quite shallow. Clan Ice Hellion is the "I wanna go fast" clan, Clan Nova Cat was the hippie clan, Clan Goliath Scorpion was the other hippie clan I guess, um, there were a bunch of clans named after snakes and I guess one of them invented heavy lasers at some point? Point was, some of the clans were interesting and popular, and others really weren't.

Of the original twenty Clans, five (Burrock, Mongoose, Widowmaker, Wolverine, Smoke Jaguar) had bitten the dust by 3071 and Clan Wolf had split into two. That left fifteen Clans, sorta kinda sixteen, and several of them just weren't that popular. The writers rescued this situation with the Wars of Reaving, an absolutely glorious orgy of destruction starting in 3071 that whittled the remaining clans down to just nine... or ten... it depends how you count. But, most importantly, four of the Clans that did survive got cut off from the Inner Sphere and thus essentially written out of the story, at least for the foreseeable future. The Clans remaining in the Inner Sphere got cut off from their cultural homeland, and this gave a chance for their cultures to evolve and become more interesting.

Clan Sea Fox got re-written from being a proud warrior race with a hint of merchant savvy to ronin capitalist warrior merchants which is a heart-warming concept. After getting booted out of the Clan homeworlds during the aforementioned Wars of Reaving, Clan Diamond Shark began a series of reforms which would ultimately culminate in the heavily de-centralized form in which they exist in the Dark Age era after Khan Mori Hawker's tenure starting in 3113.

As of the Dark Age setting, the re-re-named Clan Sea Fox no longer has a homeworld at all. They have some land enclaves on planets, mostly manufacturing centers and spaceports, but the bulk of their forces and personnel live a nomadic existence in gigantic spacecraft called ArcShips. These are modified WarShips that have most of the weapons stripped out and additional habitation areas and manufacturing facilities put in. Per Field Manual: 3145, the bulk of the Sea Foxes' manufacturing might is in these gigantic faster-than-light ships. Since the faster-than-light communications network in the Inner Sphere was 80% crippled in 3132, the true extent and disposition of Clan Sea Foxes' trade fleets are a mystery.

Clan Sea Fox is organized into five Khanates, the largely autonomous sub-divisions of the Clan. Each of those Khanates is further subdivided into Aimags, which are still smaller administrative units. While the Sea Foxes hold very little planetary territory, very nearly the entire Inner Sphere is divided up into exclusive sales territories of the Khanates. The rights to buy sell and barter in specific parts of space can be contested between the Khanates by various means including, you guessed it, trial by combat. If the idea of annoying door-to-door weapons salesmen fighting honor duels among themselves for the right to sell arms to both sides of a particularly fractious part of space doesn't strike you as absolutely hilarious then I'm afraid there's no hope for your sense of humor.

Clan Sea Fox mostly stays out of local disputes, though the era sourcebooks dutifully note the few major exceptions. There's a mention in some fluff text to Skate Khanate attempting to trade with a planet in the Capellan Confederation. The Capellans tell the Foxes 'no, absolutely not', and start shooting at the Sea Fox forces when the latter attempt to land on their planet despite being told to fuck off. Clan Sea Fox considered this so outrageously unreasonable that they promptly invaded the spaceport, shot up the defenders, and declared all the ships in the spaceport as well as anything valuable in the warehouses to be war booty. That is what you get for not embracing the mutual benefits of free trade.

In short, Clan Sea Fox is goofy, but they are absolutely not harmless. The fluff in the 3145 sourcebooks notes that despite their capitalist bent, their warriors are top-notch and their force deployment table notes a higher than normal percentage of elite units, and more of their units are at or near full strength. Still, their total military strength is about half that of, say the Jade Falcons during the same period, and they're spread quite thin.

Why This is Great for GMs

For games set in the Clan Invasion or Jihad eras, clantech is really, really hard for anyone in the Inner Sphere to get their hands on. The most straightforward way to get some is to salvage it after fighting the Clans, but the problem with this is that fighting the Clans is an extremely good way to die. Happily, in Dark Age, this is no longer a problem. Clan Sea Fox will sell very nearly everything to everyone, with a large number of the hot 'mech designs from the era being explicitly fluffed as export designs of their invention. The random assignment tables for the Dark Age era reflect this too, with a light sprinkling of clantech mechs even showing up in the periphery courtesy of Clan Sea Fox. If one of the players in your campaign wants a shiny clantech mech, the existence of Clan Sea Fox is an extremely convenient and reasonable contrivance to allow that to happen.

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