I, Kincaid Furey of the Smoke Jaguar Clan, do take this opportunity to respond to your accusations, in the January 3052 issue of your magazine. I must first state that were you of the lower castes of the Clan, I would order you and your children killed for your effrontery. We are not answerable to you for our actions in the glorious liberation of the Inner Sphere. The actions of the bandits infesting Edo City left us no choice but to exterminate them like the surats, I mean the rats, they were. They had no honor, even the debased sort we have sometimes seen during our Homecoming. If they had possessed the courage to face us in honorable combat, we should have accommodated them gladly. Instead they chose assassin's tools: bombs, sniping from distance, poisons, etc. Thus they showed their true colors, and paid the price for it. I have no remorse, nor does any of my warriors. As regards the snivelling cowards who call themselves mercenaries, they will serve no lord for loyalty, substituting money for honor. In our crusade to restore the Star League, we will not tolerate the presence of these vermin. Whenever we defeat them, we will at least take their equipment; they are fortunate to be left with their lives. We will fight wherever you challenge us -in cities, on plains, in mountains. It is not our concern that you whine in defeat; that is your deficiency, not ours. Using these so-called chemical/biological horrors on us would be the last mistake your forces would make. To date in this liberation, we have attempted to use as light a force as possible, giving you a fair chance to possibly win battles against our forces. Your 'victories' have been accomplished through the vilest treachery imaginable. Again, if the commanders of your respective forces had been of the Clans, they would have met the fate of all incompetent commanders: death. The Ares Conventions were a noble set of rules governing warfare, and we use them when we fight warriors. The distinction here is that so few of you have shown that you are true warriors. Some that have shown honor are Kai Allard-Liao and, to a lesser extent, Victor Steiner Davion and Hohiro Kurita. Even Khan Phelan Ward of the Wolf Clan is a fine warrior in spite of his origins. We make no excuse or promise to you. We are what we are: the ultimate warriors. As such, your slanders do not touch us. We hold no one hostage; the new members of our various Clans go about their daily affairs unharmed or hindered, unless they disrupt the new order. In sum, I care not greatly whether you trust us or not. We have given our pledges to our leaders to obey them, not to behave as you would have us do. I enjoy your use of the term 'barbarians' regarding us, for which of our cultures has tirelessly repeated the same errors time after time in the so-called Succession Wars instead of uniting against outside threats? "In all fairness, I must defend the Smoke Jaguars against charges of barbarism in the bombing of Edo. I agree that they committed an atrocity in the atomic bombing of the city from orbit. But to them, it was not an act of reasonless mayhem. It was a horrified reaction to what seemed to them a city full of the violently insane." NAIS Professor of Xenopsychology Ariadne Pantali, in her paper at the 3054 Robinson Conference, explained, "When the population of Turtle Bay surrendered, they became Smoke Jaguars, in the eyes of the Smoke Jaguars. They were bondsmen, but still part of the Jaguars, expected to change loyalty, to become part of the 'body' of the Clan. When part of your body acts irrationally, such as developing cancer, you have it cut out so the body can heal. "When we of the Known Sphere conquer a system, we expect a period of pacification and re-education. We expect that even after the military efforts of the system prove fruitless, the ordinary citizens will resent the changes a conqueror makes. We expect a period of pacification as a planetary population 'learns the new rules.' We are prepared to combat a strong underground or resistance movement, which may last over several generations before eroding into a token force. We have tried and true tactics for dealing with these groups. Whether you call them dissident elements or patriots, we feel, depends entirely on your point of view. "When a Clan conquers the territory of another Clan, the people in that territory either flee, die, or become zero-level members of the new Clan. That's what the so-called 'bondsmen' are, not slaves. They have the usual unenviable duties of the lowest level of any hierarchy, but they have the potential right to become members of the ruling group. These bondsmen are expected to be loyal to their new Clan, just as adopted children become members of anew family. "The Inner Sphere contains multitudes of very different societies. If a conqueror does not understand why a planetary society does not act according to his expectations, he will get in, a team of experts to explain them to him, and another team of propagandists to explain to the populace what he expects of them. The Clans have very similar societies, differing in details of execution rather than in essence. When a planetary society does not act as they expect, they consider it a society of crazy people, irrational and dangerous. If it is dangerous enough, they destroy it." ComStar Briefing From a ComStar Psych briefing on the Clans before the Battle of Tukayyid. "The Smoke Jaguars were horrified by the resistance at Turtle Bay. They felt that they were forced to set an example of sternness they would rather not have used. They were confused when civilians refused to surrender; civilians do not fight in their world view. Their laws are very strict, with strict penalties. They do not expect to have to carry out those penalties very often. How many times a century do you see the Inner Sphere equivalent, a trial for high treason? They have a warrior code, but the civilians of Turtle Bay did not fit into that code; they were not warriors. The closest equivalent we would find in our legal system is the precedent for killing mad dogs." From the Outreach briefing to Inner Sphere leaders. "The Clans do not have the concept of 'the citizen', an independent being who groups with other independent beings to form a political association they call a state. They are a group of people who see themselves as a very extended family. The senior members are the only ones with any say on group policies, internal and external. The junior members have the guidance and protection of strict law and custom. The pressure to behave as a proper Clans member of your station is continual and pervasive. Clans men and women literally have no idea that there is any other way to think and act. The pressure valve of this system is the Trial. There are ritual ways that a member of the society may challenge the fate assigned to him, or demand that her voice be heard. These challenges are invariably settled by combat. Once that combat is over, the issue is decided, not to be reopened." "The only way a non-warrior may escape the life decreed for him is to learn to fight and win a place in a combat unit. The emotions a non-warrior feels for the work she does, the soil he tills, are not part of Clans psychosocial makeup. The Smoke Jaguars had no understanding, indeed no basis for understanding how a citizen feels about his rights, and how a free person feels about her homeplace." 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