They Came From Minnesota!
The strange tales of BattleTech's Minnesota Tribe
Last time, we were talking about the mystery of BattleTech’s Clan Wolverine and the difficulties of their “true story”. But before there was Clan Wolverine, there was the Minnesota Tribe. This piece is going to mention a lot of star systems, so here’s a quick guide. As the events talked about in this piece span centuries, I’ve gone with the most recent, 3151 borders for the underlying map - credit to the wonderful folks at Sarna.net for the original.
The original mystery
The first appearance of the Minnesota Tribe in print predates the beginning of the Clan Invasion storyline. Back in 1987, FASA produced a sourcebook called House Kurita (The Draconis Combine), presented as in-universe document published around 3025 by ComStar for internal use. In the history section of House Kurita, readers were introduced to the mystery of the Tribe. The account there tells of a “previously unknown” unit of “nearly regimental strength” that appeared in 2825 and raided what were then Draconis Combine worlds: Svelvik (marked on the map as “1”), Trondheim (2), Jarrett (3), and Richmond (4). At the last site, they hit “prison and slave camps”, loading up thousands of camp inmates before disappearing as mysteriously as they had appeared. The Tribe is described as fielding forces freshly painted in Star League Defense Force (SLDF) colors with an outline of Minnesota in place of their regimental patch, and fighting in the manner of the SLDF. No communications were answered and pilots of destroyed ‘mechs chose death rather than capture. While the House Kurita version does note suspicions of a link to General Kerensky’s Exodus, it states that the symbols of the Minnesota Tribe “were not listed on any Regular Army order of battle”. This version of the story does not mention any wolverine symbols anywhere.
None of this matches up very well with the Clan Wolverine story in Betrayal of Ideals. The remnant force that escaped the Clan worlds was down to nearly two clusters, which is pushing things for “nearly regimental strength”. (A KLONDIKE-era Clan Cluster had a paper strength of 45 ‘mechs. An Inner Sphere regiment would typically have 120.) It’s also rather unclear why they would have adopted only the Minnesota outline of the 331st “North American” Royal Battlemech Division that Sarah McEvedy’s father led - or any identifying marks, for that matter.
1988’s The Star League is also presented as a ComStar document and, unsurprisingly, has much the same Minnesota Tribe story as House Kurita. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that it throws in some examples of similar weirdness. There are throwaway mentions of the Vandenberg White Wings, a fleet spotted on the edge of Capellan space (probably at New Vandenberg), and the Disappearing Battleship of Merope. We’re also told about the mercenary Clinton’s Cutthroats being evacuated by a mysterious force sometime during the sixteen decades of the Third Succession War - a really great way to show the reader that these rumors were anything but definite! All of these tales were vaguely linked to Kerensky’s Exodus, along with a similar rumor about another mercenary unit: the Wolf’s Dragoons. (More on them some other time.)
The following year, FASA launched the Clan Invasion storyline with Michael Stackpole’s novel Lethal Heritage and for a time the Minnesota Tribe trail went cold as the Clans themselves were established. But 1991’s Wolf Clan added a connection between the Tribe and Clan Wolverine – writing in 3052, our old friend Anastasius Focht told us that “it’s no coincidence” that the Minnesota Tribe arrived in the Inner Sphere shortly after the Wolverine Annihilation. I should point out here that Focht’s discernment on conspiracy theories wasn’t the best. At one point he thought that the Clans could be alien creatures who had devoured the people of the Exodus and invaded the Inner Sphere in search of more human flesh – and he believed that theory robust enough to present to a meeting of his civilian superiors in ComStar.
Speaking of Focht’s superiors, we got more Minnesota Tribe lore in 1992’s ComStar sourcebook. Unlike the previous sources, this wasn’t presented as a pure ComStar text but instead reflected a split in that organization. The main narrative was carried by the secularized ComStar, but there were interjections from the more mystical Word of Blake splinter sect. The narrative on the Tribe here seems straightforward. The reader is told about records of ComStar’s leaders discussing the Minnesota Tribe and concluding that the group was connected to Kerensky. Those discussions concluded with ComStar making a panicked and failed effort to establish talks. There are just two problems here. Firstly, the ComStar effort to contact the Tribe is said to have tracked them “into the Deep Periphery toward the Federated Suns” and lost track of them near Valentina. I’ve tentatively marked the known system of that name with a “?” on the map – it’s possible that there’s another Valentina further out, but the “toward the Federated Suns” part is very hard to understand, maybe even deliberately garbled.
I say deliberately not just out of principle – you know I hate “the writers got it wrong!” – but because of the second problem. Right before discussing the Tribe, the ComStar Sourcebook tells us that the leadership of the ComStar organization had embarked on a voyage to the Periphery in late 2824 to recruit new members. The narrative tells us that the increasingly religious outlook of the Order was starting to put a dent in recruitment in the sophisticated worlds of the Inner Sphere. Even Earth, which ComStar had saved from the horrors of the First Succession War, was flagging in dedication. The recruiting trip was meant to have lasted a year and a half, which has it overlapping at least the beginning of the Minnesota Tribe incident (2825-26). Apparently the mission was highly successful, supplying many new acolytes to ComStar. If you’re not suspicious yet, the ComStar Sourcebook also strongly suggests that the Order’s destruction of an abandoned Black Lion-class Battlecruiser near New Vandenberg created the myth of the Vandenberg White Wings.
In fairness (I suppose), the Wolverine excuse is invoked in a sidebar presented as a long buried summary report into the Minnesota Tribe. The report claimed that ComStar operatives examined one of the dead mechwarriors from the action on Richmond, and discovered not only a badge with the outline of Minnesota but also a “331” stitched onto it. ComStar, as you’ll recall, couldn’t match the Minnesota outline to any Star League Defense Force unit in their archives in 3025, but in 3052 they were pretty sure that the design matched the 331st “North American” Royal Battlemech Division. They also found a patch depicting, “a Terran wolverine, white in color, with bloodied fangs.” This is not a good description of the Clan Wolverine logo that BattleTech fans have become familiar with – but it works perfectly as a guess at the logo’s appearance from someone who’s never seen the real thing.
If no other sources had ever discussed the Minnesota Tribe, the most plausible explanation for the affair wouldn’t be Clan Wolverine. It would be a ComStar operation best described as something between human trafficking and a prison break.
An Enormous Conspiracy
I get the impression that a lot of BattleTech fans don’t really care for the Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents Sourcebook that came out in 2008, because I rarely see it being referenced. Certainly, the story it advances about Clan Wolverine and the Minnesota Tribe isn’t treated as reverently as the one in Betrayal of Ideals, despite both being presented as the revealed truth of a mystery. Perhaps that’s because the tale in Blake Documents is pretty wild. Let’s ease into it.
A few paragraphs up, I implied that the Tribe’s appearance was either an incursion from the Periphery or a ComStar “recruiting mission”. I’m sure that someone who read that thought, “Why not both?” (I love doing that, too.) This is pretty much where Blake Documents went in a chapter titled “The Not-Named”. After a quick introduction, the reader’s given a series of log entries attributed to some member of the Wolverine “Third Exodus”. (It’s tempting to say that the writer is meant to be Trish Ebon from Betrayal of Ideals, though the writing style doesn’t resemble the way she thinks in the novel and certain claims don’t entirely match up with what’s in Betrayal.) Through that device it was revealed that ComStar made friendly contact with the Minnesota Tribe (here definitely tagged as Clan Wolverine), established a working relationship, and arranged to settle the Tribe on Mars. In the process of making their pact with ComStar, the Wolverines transformed from a militarized society dominated by Sarah McEvedy’s cult of personality to a more mystical cult known as the Blood, initially led by a scientist named Marillier.
Apart from people living on a planet as bitterly hostile to human life as Mars, I find this relatively plausible as a continuation of the broad outline of Betrayal of Ideals. The Wolverines of the novel talked a good fight about the ideal of freedom without any real commitment to its substance, while a lot of their battlefield prowess seemed to rely on the achievements of their scientist caste. It’s fairly easy to accept that the Annihilation-ravaged survivors became politically and culturally dominated by their scientists, especially when their scientific knowledge formed a key part of their all-important relationship with ComStar. Similarly, a further narrative claim that ComStar secretly re-colonized five worlds lost to the ravages of the Succession Wars and used those as bases is unsurprising. (Even if you don’t buy the idea that the Blood was involved in this, ComStar certainly had the means, motive, and opportunity for setting up secret bases.)
What are surprising – and Blake Documents has the character Chandrasekhar Kurita express doubts about these too – are claims attributed to the Blood about their vast influence over ComStar and the Inner Sphere in general. The Blood’s spokesperson believed that they had the power to make and break ComStar’s leaders and that they had masterminded the Order’s covert attempts to drive the Inner Sphere into complete barbarism. The source even claims that the Wolverine descendants deliberately provoked Operation REVIVAL (the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere) by prompting the creation of ComStar’s Explorer Corps and directing the voyage of the explorer jumpship Outbound Light. Practically the only thing the Blood didn’t take credit (or blame) for was the appointment of Anastasius Focht as the leader of ComStar’s armed forces, the ComGuards.
The narrative from the Blood leaves off on the eve of the Clan Invasion and we’re given some loosely related documents to carry on the cryptic narrative. A note from ComStar’s Primus Myndo Waterly seems to link the Blood to Operation SCORPION (Waterly’s botched attempt to seize control of the Inner Sphere around the time of the climactic battle of Tukayyid). A longer series of notes is attributed to the Word of Blake’s secretive Master (named in Blake Documents as the original Thomas Marik). These portray him as an ally of the Blood and believer in their “Great Work”, making the Wolverine descendants part of the conspiracy that led to the horrors of the Word of Blake Jihad.
I have a feeling that this connection, more than the presentation, is why people don’t pass the Blake Documents story around as the true fate of Clan Wolverine. It doesn’t suit the popular “Good Clan” narrative to see Sarah McEvedy’s heirs as the architects of the Jihad – or even to give the story partial credence and see the Blood as a faction in the Word of Blake, rather than its sinister heart. But at other points which were dubious at the time, Blake Documents seems to get things right. Thomas Marik was established as the Word of Blake’s “Master” in other sources. Another rumor in the text, the idea that Arthur Steiner-Davion survived the 3062 assassination attempt and fell into the hands of the Word of Blake gets ridiculed by the commentary in Blake Documents – but seems to have been borne out, whether you believe that Arthur became Devlin Stone or not. (Another big topic for another day.) We’re also told that the link between Clan Wolverine and the Word of Blake was convincing enough to sway Clan Ghost Bear into joining the anti-Word coalition and sifting the remains of defeated Blakists for DNA that could tie them to the Wolverines.
Finally, readers of 2012’s Interstellar Players 3: Interstellar Expeditions were shown a likely connection between the Minnesota Tribe and the Word of Blake in the introductory fiction, “Shades and Spirits”. The scene is an unnamed world not far from the tantalizingly named “McEvedy’s Folly” – officially that name has nothing to do with Sarah McEvedy or her Wolverine Clan, though coincidences are rare in BattleTech. One of Interstellar Expeditions’ intrepid tomb robbers has uncovered a site that supposedly solved the Minnesota Tribe mystery once and for all – but is murdered by the Word of Blake before his revelation could be made public. The story is brief and guarded with the details, only referring to the discovery of an abandoned “Minnesota colony” which contained:
“Ragged uniforms bearing the Minnesota patch of the 331st Royal Battlemech Division and the strange Terran wolverine emblem. Discarded husks of barely identifiable BattleMechs. Technical devices of Star League-era sophistication but clearly not of Star League manufacture.”
There’s also a piece of “villain exposition” which has a traitor in the Interstellar Expeditions team spilling the beans about how the Word of Blake was taking action to keep the site’s secrets hidden, before being killed. Regardless of how much you like that literary device, if you buy the claims in “Shades and Spirits” some connection between the Minnesota Tribe and the Word of Blake is pretty much undeniable. What kind of connection is more up for grabs.
Not a Verdict - but a Conclusion
The Minnesota Tribe remains cryptic. Despite Blake Documents, I think it’s still respectable to stick with the old “ComStar lied” explanation and wave aside the links to the Wolverines as opportunistic rewriting by the Order (and later, by Chandrasekhar Kurita) to suit their needs. There are also reasons for going all-in on the Blood conspiracy theory, despite the lack of evidence for them elsewhere – in the world of conspiracy theories, lack of evidence isn’t really a problem. Or one could plot some kind of middle course, perhaps buying the Wolverines as the origin of the Tribe and the idea that ComStar recruited the Wolverine descendants without making the Blood into the puppet-masters of history. For that matter, if you don’t like any of these options, there are plenty of other possibilities. The Minnesota Tribe could have been an early scouting mission by the Clans. They might well have been remnants of the “Secret Army” that Stefan Amaris raised in the Periphery, or perhaps descendants of a fragment of Kerensky’s Exodus fleet who were separated from the main body by mis-jump and had to chart another course.
My advice is to go with what works for your games – and be courteous to people who choose other readings for their games.