Clan Origins
From Kerensky's Stars came the Eight
Hundred
Beneath a banner of Truth and Righteous Light
To lift up those who had suffered and to smite down
With fearful vengeance those who had ruled
In the name of Vanity or Greed.
The thunder of their BattleMechs' feet, the lightning
From their weapons, and the blood spilled in their name
Created the Clan Spirit, the forge upon which
We have fashioned ourselves to be the weapon
Of the resurrected Star League,
Honed to a razor's edge by the Trials,
By The Remembrance, and by the Words
Of the Great Kerenskys, our sires, our saviors.
-The Remembrance (Clan Wolf), Passage 98, Verse 24, Lines 8-20
Nicholas planned the retaking of the Pentagon worlds for 20 years. While he waited, aided by Jennifer Winson, his wife and most trusted confidant, he moved to rid his supporters of the "last vestiges of that contaminated society that gave us such woe." Central to his plan was the complete and total reorganization of his military.
He declared the traditions of the Regular Army hopelessly tainted by its sinful past. He organized his strike force of 800 into 20 "Clans" of 40 warriors each. Gone were the lances, companies, battalions, and regiments favored by the Star League. As their base, the Clans used "Stars" of five MechWarriors each. Two Stars formed a Binary, and four Binaries formed a Cluster. Each Clan was a Cluster, and several Clusters formed a Galaxy. The most reliable evidence indicates that this germinal force contained five Galaxies, but conflicting records place the numbers at three to seven Galaxies. The original 800 warriors proved crucial to the final form of the Clan structure. Star League ranks, and every other aspect of that army glorifying the individual, were replaced by an organization stressing ongoing testing. The new order also stressed that each Clan was a family, a society unto itself. Using BattleMechs from caches on Strana Mechty, Nicholas equipped and trained his army according to his vision.
When the newly formed Clans finally returned to the worlds of the Pentagon, they found a nightmare situation. From the descriptions of the Loremasters and the intelligence holotapes taken by Nicholas' forces, it is clear that the Exodus Civil War was far more devastating than any of our Succession Wars. The soldiers who survived faced the Clans in barely functional 'Mechs. Even though the rebels on each of the five worlds had numerical superiority, the firepower and reliability of the Clan BattleMechs won the day. Battles were bitterly fought, and many Clan warriors died. Nicholas Kerensky suffered personal losses. In the final battle for Eden, his younger brother Andery was ambushed and killed by five rebel BattleMechs. Within a year, however, the Pentagon worlds were beaten and forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Nicholas and his Clans.
Many of the survivors hailed Nicholas as savior. His physical appearance, strikingly similar to his father's, added to his mystique. The supplies he distributed freely saved countless lives. The survivors were so grateful to him and so unbalanced by the events of the past 20 years, that they virtually worshipped Nicholas. In fact, they often hailed them as his father, a mistake Nicholas seemed reluctant to correct.
The Exodus Civil War took a tremendous toll on the populations of the Pentagon worlds. A census taken soon after Nicholas' invasion found that the survivors numbered less than half the population of General Kerensky's Exodus. The war had cost millions of lives.