Editing Clan Invasion (section)

=== 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.