Editing Clan Invasion (section)

== Invasion ==
The invasion began in the "northern" (ore coreward) Periphery, though most of the planets this far out were barely worth even putting on a map and any resistance they actually ended up meeting was token at best, sometimes only a few MechWarriors or aerospace fighters using horrifyingly outdated equipment, if even that. As they cleaned up and resupplied for the journey into the Inner Sphere, they ended up in contact with [[ComStar]]. Since they were both megalomaniacal and planning on taking complete control of man's destiny through the forceful re-implementation of the Star League, they actually ended up getting along famously and through careful negotiation, a devious plan was hatched: ComStar would jam communications coming and going from Clan-targeted worlds, and the Clans would give up some of the worlds conquered by them and stay out of their way. While not everybody was on board, it seemed to fill the agendas if both well enough to cooperate.

=== Wave One: The Clans draw first blood ===
[[File:Refuse my Batchall.jpg|300px|left|thumb|A common refrain of Clan Commanders shortly after reaching the Inner Sphere]] 
Clans Wolf, Jade Falcon, Ghost Bear, and Smoke Jaguar entered the Inner Sphere for the first time in March of 3050, using ComStar's blackout as their cover. Each had their own invasion corridor moving in from the "north" (coreward) down "south" (rimward). At one end, Jade Falcon's Corridor pushed into [[Lyran_Commonwealth|Lyran]] space at the "east" (spinward), as did Wolf's. The Ghost Bears pushed into the [[Free Rasalhague Republic]], while the Smoke Jaguars pushed into the [[Draconis Combine]] on the "west" (anti-spinward).

With their attention focused against each other ever since the [[Succession Wars]] started 300 years ago, the sudden arrival of a massive force on a backwater frontier with token defenses was a nasty surprise for the invaded nations. The fact that these invaders had with them [[Clan Elemental|power armored shock troops]], [[LosTech]] BattleMechs and pilots who had been genetically enhanced and trained from childhood to be perfect warriors that could take on multiple 'Mechs and win and fleets of WarShips on top of that was such a shock that many thought they were fighting aliens. Dozens of worlds fell rapidly as the invaders went from system to system, wiping the floor with what amounted to frontier border patrols.

That's not to say that everything was smooth sailing for the Clans; they soon found out that the Inner Sphere did not play by their rules and did not fight fair. Frankly, they probably should have seen that coming. Lack of foresight aside, they did have an overwhelming advantage in terms of individual unit quality, but sometimes they faced nasty and costly surprises.

Among the most notable developments was on the planet Turtle Bay in the Draconis Combine. Clan Smoke Jaguar managed to capture Hohiro Kurita, the heir of House Kurita. They did not know this at the time and, when they did find out, he had already managed to sneak out with assistance of the locals. In retaliation, the jerks blew up the city of Edo, killing a million people. Even other Clanners considered this a dick move. As mentioned before, the Smoke Jaguars were assholes. Such assholes, in fact, that this particular incident resulted in every other Clan started bidding away WarShips to avoid association.

A similar incident took place on Trell I, where the Jade Falcons failed to capture the heir of the Federated Commonwealth, Victor Steiner-Davion, who managed to escape **despite attempting to stay and fight with his men.** Thankfully for the Trellans Jade Falcon did not hold a nuclear hissy fit.

Other shortcomings typically involved the Inner Sphere not understanding or just not caring about the Clans' martial code of honorable conduct, sometimes even straight up abusing it, which should have been an indication of things to come. This, along with perpetual rebellions, largely went ignored by Clan commanders.

=== Wave Two: The Inner Sphere catches on ===
As the second wave began in earnest, the Inner Sphere at long last recognized that this particular problem was not going away, but was in fact getting much, much worse with each passing month, and while the Clans initially didn't see any major changes in their battle plans, they found that the Draconis Combine and the [[Federated Suns]] had struck an unprecedented truce to directly ignore each other and focus on the Clanners, starting with all of their very most elite units suddenly showing up to join the party.

Furthermore, the Clans (particularly Ghost Bear and Smoke Jaguar) were running into a big problem: it was becoming a logistical nightmare to drag all the supplies they needed all the way from the Clan Homeworlds in the Deep Periphery to the Inner Sphere for what was becoming an increasingly drawn-out invasion. While the Rasalhagues were tied up in indecision, they still managed to organise a resistance. On top of this, rebellions had been breaking out on conquered planets that had been assumed pacified, blindsided the over-honorable Clanners, forcing them to send valuable Stars away from the frontlines to subdue what they considered dishonorable rebels. After all, to a Clanner, civilians are supposed to just accept any new flag planted in their back yards. But despite these problems, the Clans marched forward, somehow only hampered slightly. They were starting to lose momentum, but still gaining world after world.

And there was one Clan who was going for the gold.

=== Wave Three: Clan Wolf's Vengeance ===
Clan Wolf initially had no intention whatsoever to actually get involved in the invasion, as previously mentioned. But now that they were there, they decided that they were going to play to win, which was a huge problem for the Inner Sphere. Unlike Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon, Clan Wolf had plenty of steam left to go finish off the Free Rasalhague Republic entirely and they were planning on making good on that right away. This was naturally blown off by the other Clans, who thought that Clan Wolf was overextending itself and would eventually run into the same problems they were dealing with. Turns out they weren't even going to get that far.

Clans Wolf and Ghost Bear spent months bidding for the right to invade Rasalhague, with Clan Wolf winning the bid by committing a mere three Clusters to face the entirety of the KungsArmé (FRR's military force). Nobody thought that they'd be able to actually cap off their aggressive tactics with a big win here of all places, but a big win they got, managing to force the Elected Prince into exile, taking Rasalhague itself and finishing the third wave with eleven more planets than when they started. They now had a massive lead in the race to Terra.

The other Clans, naturally, were pissed about this.

=== Wave Four: Wrath of Khan ===
This was, in many ways, the turning point of the entire invasion, even if the real pivotal moment had yet to be drawn up. 

The ilKhan and the Clan Council had sent Clan Wolf to the Inner Sphere hopefully to get slaughtered, and were now deeply concerned that the Clan that had wanted fuckall to do with the operation, and spent the most time against this course of action, was now so aggressively and successfully taking world after world with a clear lead that Smoke Jaguar, Ghost Bear, and Jade Falcon simply couldn't match. Ghost Bear did fine, capturing eight worlds at a snail's pace and otherwise calling it a successful wave, but Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon were getting hammered from all sides and were the first Clans to actually give up ground to the Spheroids. The first was Jade Falcon, whose elite Falcon Guard caught the full brunt of a FedCom assault to take back the planet of Twycross. While their presence had been unexpected, and so unplanned for, the Falcon Guard was still wiped out. Smoke Jaguar got suckered into bad play after bad play by Theodore Kurita, culminqting in their defense of the planet Wolcott. Here, the Combine deceived and outmaneuvred the Jaguars, securing a victory that gave them valuable access to Clan technology and was so devastating that the Jaguars never attempted another attack. While the Clan Council tried to stymy Wolf's advance, they could ultimately do little but bitch and moan as the Clan actually getting shit done led the way.

Smoke Jaguar's Khan, who was also ilKhan, was naturally quite unhappy with the way this whole thing was going after such a good start and called for the Council to meet at the newly conquered planet Radstadt aboard the ''Dire Wolf'', flagship of Clan Wolf, to discuss the ongoing situation. Wolf Khan Ulrich Kerensky agreed, but only if the rest of the Clans brought ships smaller than the ''Dire Wolf''. Everything was good for about four hours, right until a big fleet of Rasalhague ships showed up to crash the party. It was complete chaos over Radstadt as Clan Wolf's precautions had ultimately allowed the Rasalhaguers a fighting chance to get a modicum of revenge after getting their entire section of space eaten for breakfast. The Elected Prince fought his way off of Radstadt and out into orbit, where he managed to escape the Clanners and vow to fight another day, but not before his Drakøns fighter unit pulled off one of the ballsiest suicide missions of the war: ramming an aerospace fighter directly into the bridge of the ''Dire Wolf'', which resulted in the death of the ilKhan, but not Clan Wolf's Khan, crippling the advance considerably. This self-sacrificial action for the good of her nation impressed the Clans that the pilot, Tyra Miraborg, was written into The Remembrance (Passage 294, Verse 8, Lines 17-33), an epic poem serving as their primary means of recording significant events in their history.

As the Clans tried to assess the damage, they realized this whole thing was only ever going to work if there was an ilKhan to impose some semblance of order and coordination. Unfortunately, tradition requires all Bloodnamed warriors to be present during the election, something quite hard to do when most of them were fighting Davion and Kurita forces. The Council winced at the idea, but ultimately chose stability over further battle, dragging every last Bloodnamed warrior back to Clan space in the [[Deep Periphery]], delaying the fifth wave for an entire year. With only a skeleton crew of non-Bloodnamed warriors left behind to guard the tentative Clan conquests, the Inner Sphere now had time to lick their wounds, develop new strategies and reverse engineer salvaged Clan tech.

=== Wave Five: ComStar's wakeup call ===
After what became known as the "Year of Peace" and with a new ilKhan lead them, the Clans showed up bright and early in October of 3052 ahead of schedule. Clan Wolf was on a mission to finish this before anyone else got the chance to tell them off. Ghost Bear moved at a ponderous pace, but still picked up some valuable worlds out of the deal. Jade Falcon got into a spat with [[Clan Steel Viper]] over their shared invasion corridor, which ultimately neither side benefited from, to the point that both performed terribly in this particular wave. Meanwhile, Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat had decided that, after getting humiliated as badly as both had been, they were going to put any of their bullshit aside and just try and catch up with Clan Wolf, starting by pounding the Combine as hard as they could until they opened a path to the Draconis capital world of Lucien. The Combine didn't take that lying down and threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat until they were finally beaten away, leaving both Clans furious and desperate for better results. But these were small victories, which wasn't really what the Inner Sphere needed.

They needed territory back.

See, for all the back and forth battles they were now having (as opposed to the earlier waves where they mostly got curbstomped), they were still not gaining any ground and ultimately losing more of it than they were defending and the prospect of gaining ground back seemed like a pipe dream. Nobody had an easy answer, but an incredible stroke of luck happened to fall in their favor as ComStar's Primus, Myndo Waterly, had decided to go see what Ulrich Kerensky's ultimate goal was now that they had all this territory. She was given the very rudest wakeup call imaginable: the Clans were in a race to go after Terra, the cradle of human civilization and also current home of ComStar. Frankly, ComStar should probably have seen this coming, or figured it out much earlier. Nevertheless, they were naturally horrified by this realization. Primus Waterly and Precentor-Martial Anastasius Focht - formerly one Frederick Steiner, a phenomenally gifted military mind by any measure (who somehow sprung out of the Lyran Commonwealth of all places) and supreme commander of ComGuard -  immediately went to the First Circuit, who came to the realization they would have to figure this out quickly or risk putting ComStar in jeopardy.

Waterly, now having to deal with the consequences of her actions and more than likely realizing that if this kept up their involvement in the Invasion would cause the Inner Sphere to tear them limb from limb, for once decided to listen to advice from Focht (who had studied Clans' culture and military carefully) and have him try a daring plan; he would use the Clan's own societal norms against them.

He would begin a Trial of Possession with the Clans on the planet of Tukayyid.