Golden Century
"I do not begrudge our Brother Wolves their wealth. Nor do I begrudge them their successful exploration. However, I question whether or not they remember Nicholas Kerensky's admonition to those who would strive to rise above others: Know that the nail that sticks out from the rest asks to be pounded."
-Khan Natalie Buhallin, in a speech before the Grand Council
A new era among the Clans began when Nicholas Kerensky died at the hands of Clan Widowmaker during the latter's Trial of Refusal. Clan Wolf avenged his death by obliterating Widowmaker and erasing that Clan from the records of Clan society, but Kerensky's death also stripped the Clans of the only leadership they had ever known.
Clan Wolf destroyed what it could of Clan Widowmaker's
assets and took the rest as isorla, spoils of war, which vastly increased the Wolves'
material wealth. This prompted yet another clash with Clan Jade Falcon, whose Khans
opposed Clan Wolf gaining all Widowmaker's wealth. Though the Falcons applauded the
Wolves' ferocity in avenging the death of their beloved leader, they claimed that Clan
Widowmaker's assets should be divided equally among the Clans.
Their objection did not spring from an overdeveloped sense of fairness. The Falcons feared
their rivals growing even more economically powerful and their wealth giving them new
importance in the Grand Council. If the Wolves became too powerful, other Clans might
begin throwing their support to Clan Wolf's dangerous liberal sentiments.
But Clan Jade Falcon was fighting a losing battle in asking the Grand Council to flout Nicholas Kerensky's tenet that the spoils of battle belong to the victor. The Grand Council roundly rejected the Falcons' petition to divide Widowmaker's assets among all the Clans, and the Falcons' worst fears were realized.
Clan Wolf rose to prominence as the most powerful Clan,
dominating the Grand Council with Clan Widowmaker's assets. Many conservative Clans began
looking to the Wolves and their Kerensky blood for guidance, and the most conservative
Clans, including Jade Falcon, Smoke Jaguar, and Star Adder, could not stem the tide.
Though the Clans had lost their great leader, they have come to call the decades following
Nicholas' death the Golden Century, for those years saw the new society's greatest
expansion and development. Tremendous leaps forward in science and technology continued to
reshape the Clan.
One of the most important developments were the artificial wombs that allowed scientists to routinely produce healthy human babies. This invention led to the sibko system, whereby "sibling companies" of twenty children each were born from sperm and ova donated by heroic but anonymous warriors. Sibko training ensured that only the best became warriors, and the Clans' warrior caste increased by leaps and bounds.
The civilian sector of Clan society expanded as science and technology unfolded. Exploration and commerce became the twin obsessions of the non-warrior castes, giving them a means to escape their strictly structured lives. A steadily increasing flow of raw materials from newly settled colonies in the Kerensky Cluster boosted industry and raised the standard of living of every civilian.
The resulting surge of civilian well-being had repercussions, however, particularly in Clan Jade Falcon. The Falcons followed the other Clans' example at first, founding major colonies in the Kerensky Cluster and stepping up production of transport JumpShips to supply the colonies and bring back raw materials for the new and existing Falcon factories. Clan Jade Falcon leaders believed that this ambitious plan would help them keep up with the growing wealth and prestige of Clan Wolf.
But Clan Jade Falcon failed to recognize the colonists' desire for fewer caste restrictions in order to better function as a pioneering community. To begin with, Clan Jade Falcon considered greater freedom for the lower castes a blasphemous idea, even though other Clans were temporarily easing the caste laws. Disputes between the warriors and the other castes swept the Falcon colonies, and neither the caste councils nor the Grand Council could resolve them. One colony finally acted, requesting permission from the Grand Council to leave the Jade Falcons and merge with another Clan, preferably Clan Wolf.
The Jade Falcon leaders once again accused Clan Wolf of attempting to steal Falcon property. In an immediate, and typical, response, Clan Jade Falcon sent warriors to every Falcon colony but the military bases and disbanded them, killing those colonists who openly rebelled against the caste system. They sent the rest back to Falcon enclaves in the Pentagon and on the more developed cluster worlds, and scrapped or sold most of the Falcon civilian fleet to other Clans. During the invasion of the Inner Sphere a century later, this lack of a civilian fleet seriously hampered Clan Jade Falcon's supply lines.
The upheaval over the colonists occurred early in the Golden Century. Other Clans believed that the Falcons had unnecessarily cut themselves off from a source of great wealth and would be forced to sit by and watch the other Clans bring in shiploads of profit from their colonies, but several far-sighted members of the Falcon merchant class proved them wrong. They entered the then-insignificant market of inter-caste commerce as middlemen and bankers, becoming the pivot of the Clans' economic boom. "Sharp as the talons of a Falcon banker" became a popular expression as Falcon merchants revealed great skill and cunning in their chosen field of endeavor.
Instead of being hopelessly poor, Clan Jade Falcon held great economic power by the end of the Golden Century. Other Clans acknowledged that power by paying more serious attention to the Falcons' conservative political views.