Touring the Stars with Bertram Habeas
We began on Terra, millions of years ago. Today, mankind stretches out among the
stars of the Milky Way, touching thousands of worlds, as far from our home as Clan
space, more than 2,000 light-years distant. Yet who are we, really? What have we
become in our relentless push outward and onward? I’m Bertram Habeas, and tonight,
let’s find the answers to these and many other fascinating questions together, as we
tour the stars!
Volume XXXIX: Visions of Honor—Origins of Clan Nova Cat
They exist among the population of the Draconis Combine. No nation of their own,
yet free to claim self-governance and to practice their beliefs. They are a culture unto
themselves, which struggled for centuries against their own kind, only to find
salvation in the bosom of the Inner Sphere. But what does the rest of the Inner Sphere
really understand about the enigma that is Clan Nova Cat? How did they survive three
centuries after Nicholas Kerensky forged his utilitarian Clans, guided by visions and
faith more than dreams of martial glory?
The Nova Cats’ origin is unique among those of Nicholas Kerensky’s Clans, but not
solely for their mysticism. Indeed, their faith had yet to crystallize when Kerensky
forged his new warrior-societies on Strana Mechty. What truly separated the Cats at
first was purely political, the fact that their first Khan was, in fact, once counted
among the enemies of the Star League. Yes, Phillip Drummond, first Khan of the Nova
Cat Clan, once served in the armed forces of Stefan Amaris the Usurper himself.
Together with Anna Rosse, a woman who saw the horrors of the Amaris crisis from
an entirely different angle as a survivor and resistance fighter on Terra, Drummond
would bring about the unique nature of the Cats not by himself, but through his
offspring.
It was Sandra Rosse, not Phillip Drummond, who would turn the Nova Cats into the
spiritual force they have become today. Her father, Phillip, led the Clan to victory in
the campaign to retake Circe, while her mother, drawing on her experiences as a
logistical wizard in the Terran resistance, would serve as the chief of the Clan’s
merchant caste. Raised by her mother, yet every bit as much her father’s daughter,
Sandra came of age fully entrenched in the same strong, mystical faith as her mother,
with her father’s ability to fight, lead, and inspire. Both of these traits would lead her
to become a warrior and, inevitably, the Clan’s next Khan, when her father confided in
her the nature of the degenerative disease that would strip him of command. After
three days of fasting and meditation, it is said, Sandra emerged from her sanctuary,
determined to unseat Phillip Drummond and claim the Khanship for herself, which she
did in a bloodless Trial. Though challengers quickly emerged, she defeated each one in
Trials of Refusal, validating her claim to lead the Clan.
Rosse’s first acts as Khan were key to the Clan’s evolution. She instituted the office
of the Oathmaster, a position that—in the Nova Cat Clan, at least—confers the
responsibility for managing the Clan’s spiritual needs to a single warrior. She wrote
the Ways of Seeing, a collection of her and her mother’s mystic experiences, and
guide for other Nova Cats to pursue their own spiritualism. Much of Sandra Rosse’s
guidance can still be felt today, with rituals from the Ways of Seeing still practiced
throughout the Clan’s holdings. Whether for personal or communal reasons, most
Nova Cats continue to seek their destiny or resolve difficult decisions by seeking
visions of the future. Though not always accurate or immediately clear, many of the
most famous vision quests have had profound impact on the lives of the Nova Cat
people.
Ironically, it would be Rosse’s own visions that would have a lasting impact in the
Nova Cats’ destiny, when she found herself enamored with the saKhan of the Smoke
Jaguar Clan, Liam Ismiril. Despite the differences in their Clans’ philosophies—
greatest of which, perhaps, was a much more lax attitude toward the lesser castes
among the Cats, compared to the Jaguars’ unquestioned warrior-supremacy—the two
allegedly became lovers, until a vision convinced Rosse to break the relationship off.
The tale goes that the Jaguar saKhan reacted to the unexpected jilting with hatred. A
ranking Nova Cat warrior was soon killed by apparent accident, and a dead nova cat
animal was found in one of the Nova Cat Clan’s iron wombs. The message was all too
clear: thenceforth, the Nova Cats and the Smoke Jaguars would be enemies. Three
centuries of simmering hostility and relentless challenges and counterchallenges would
follow, and all because of a simple vision.
Guided by visions, yet driven by Clan pragmatism. Led by the spirit and heart of a
strong warrior caste, yet embracing a level of trust in its lower castes almost unheard
of. Thus did the Nova Cat Clan grow and prosper during the Golden Century.
Together with the Sea Fox Clan, they would colonize several worlds in the Kerensky
Cluster, while their warriors would defend the Clan’s expanding holdings from Trials,
mostly fought against the Smoke Jaguars. The Cats’ desire for growth would
eventually push the Clan into the Crusader camp when the Great Debate about an
invasion of the Inner Sphere began, yet the Cats would wait over half a decade before
that vision of glory could be realized.
In part two of this four-part series on Clan Nova Cat, we’ll get a glimpse of the ways
of the Nova Cats, the visions and the traditions that bind them despite their seven-
decade divorce from their fellow children of Kerensky. Join us as we continue our
tour of the stars! I’m Bertram Habeas.
stars of the Milky Way, touching thousands of worlds, as far from our home as Clan
space, more than 2,000 light-years distant. Yet who are we, really? What have we
become in our relentless push outward and onward? I’m Bertram Habeas, and tonight,
let’s find the answers to these and many other fascinating questions together, as we
tour the stars!
Volume XXXIX: Visions of Honor—Origins of Clan Nova Cat
They exist among the population of the Draconis Combine. No nation of their own,
yet free to claim self-governance and to practice their beliefs. They are a culture unto
themselves, which struggled for centuries against their own kind, only to find
salvation in the bosom of the Inner Sphere. But what does the rest of the Inner Sphere
really understand about the enigma that is Clan Nova Cat? How did they survive three
centuries after Nicholas Kerensky forged his utilitarian Clans, guided by visions and
faith more than dreams of martial glory?
The Nova Cats’ origin is unique among those of Nicholas Kerensky’s Clans, but not
solely for their mysticism. Indeed, their faith had yet to crystallize when Kerensky
forged his new warrior-societies on Strana Mechty. What truly separated the Cats at
first was purely political, the fact that their first Khan was, in fact, once counted
among the enemies of the Star League. Yes, Phillip Drummond, first Khan of the Nova
Cat Clan, once served in the armed forces of Stefan Amaris the Usurper himself.
Together with Anna Rosse, a woman who saw the horrors of the Amaris crisis from
an entirely different angle as a survivor and resistance fighter on Terra, Drummond
would bring about the unique nature of the Cats not by himself, but through his
offspring.
- Trauma. Shock. Horror. All these factors and more have been attributed to
Nicholas Kerensky’s desire to mold a new society, where warfare would be
controlled, structured, yielding peace and prosperity without politics and
pettiness. He’d seen the horrors of Amaris’ occupation on Terra, where friends
and countrymen died—often in unimaginable ways—on the whims of a
bloodthirsty despot. Then again, in the Pentagon, the scene repeated, bloodier
than ever, as the old hatreds and loyalties returned. All that psychological
damage might have killed another, but Kerensky prevailed.
But what about those who followed him? Surely, they had seen the same
horrors of war and greed, hadn’t they? Enough to feel the same deep, burning
desire to right such wrongs? Certainly! And in no such case was this more
evident than in the cases of Phillip Drummond and Anna Rosse. For
Drummond, destroying his inner demons meant swearing himself
wholeheartedly to the cause of his personal champion, Aleksandr (and later
Nicholas) Kerensky.
Rosse was another matter. Orphaned by Amaris’ war, rescued, trained, and
raised to fight a covert war by spiritual women, only to see the Star League
falling again, she fled with Kerensky’s exodus, and knew still more trauma
when her husband, Peter Karpov, was among those who rebelled first against
Kerensky. Even Kerensky’s legendary inspiration did not ease her loss at his
justice, which involved the execution of her husband, and arrival in the
Pentagon Cluster offered only a brief glimpse of normalcy before the eruption
of the Pentagon Riots.
The spiritualism she used to heal her old wounds became her crutch, her
means of getting through the chaos and the formation of the Clans. Though she
would never herself become a warrior, through her beliefs, imparted to her and
Drummond’s daughter, Sandra, she would show a Clan how to heal and guide
itself through the troubled years to come.
Perhaps, as the saying goes, that which does not kill one truly does make one
grow stronger, for among the founders of all Clans, the best have always been
those who survived the worst traumas, lived through the worst shocks, and
overcame the worst horrors imaginable.
—Dr. Lorenzo Torres, Professor of History, University of Thorin.
It was Sandra Rosse, not Phillip Drummond, who would turn the Nova Cats into the
spiritual force they have become today. Her father, Phillip, led the Clan to victory in
the campaign to retake Circe, while her mother, drawing on her experiences as a
logistical wizard in the Terran resistance, would serve as the chief of the Clan’s
merchant caste. Raised by her mother, yet every bit as much her father’s daughter,
Sandra came of age fully entrenched in the same strong, mystical faith as her mother,
with her father’s ability to fight, lead, and inspire. Both of these traits would lead her
to become a warrior and, inevitably, the Clan’s next Khan, when her father confided in
her the nature of the degenerative disease that would strip him of command. After
three days of fasting and meditation, it is said, Sandra emerged from her sanctuary,
determined to unseat Phillip Drummond and claim the Khanship for herself, which she
did in a bloodless Trial. Though challengers quickly emerged, she defeated each one in
Trials of Refusal, validating her claim to lead the Clan.
Rosse’s first acts as Khan were key to the Clan’s evolution. She instituted the office
of the Oathmaster, a position that—in the Nova Cat Clan, at least—confers the
responsibility for managing the Clan’s spiritual needs to a single warrior. She wrote
the Ways of Seeing, a collection of her and her mother’s mystic experiences, and
guide for other Nova Cats to pursue their own spiritualism. Much of Sandra Rosse’s
guidance can still be felt today, with rituals from the Ways of Seeing still practiced
throughout the Clan’s holdings. Whether for personal or communal reasons, most
Nova Cats continue to seek their destiny or resolve difficult decisions by seeking
visions of the future. Though not always accurate or immediately clear, many of the
most famous vision quests have had profound impact on the lives of the Nova Cat
people.
Ironically, it would be Rosse’s own visions that would have a lasting impact in the
Nova Cats’ destiny, when she found herself enamored with the saKhan of the Smoke
Jaguar Clan, Liam Ismiril. Despite the differences in their Clans’ philosophies—
greatest of which, perhaps, was a much more lax attitude toward the lesser castes
among the Cats, compared to the Jaguars’ unquestioned warrior-supremacy—the two
allegedly became lovers, until a vision convinced Rosse to break the relationship off.
The tale goes that the Jaguar saKhan reacted to the unexpected jilting with hatred. A
ranking Nova Cat warrior was soon killed by apparent accident, and a dead nova cat
animal was found in one of the Nova Cat Clan’s iron wombs. The message was all too
clear: thenceforth, the Nova Cats and the Smoke Jaguars would be enemies. Three
centuries of simmering hostility and relentless challenges and counterchallenges would
follow, and all because of a simple vision.
- A fact that few people point out these days is how [Sandra] Rosse’s leadership
was succeeded by, of all people, her own father. Despite a growing Clan bias
against aging warriors, Phillip Drummond’s return was undeniable after he
passed all his Trials and even made an impassioned speech before the Nova Cat
council. That he was cured of his medical condition by Clan science was
undoubted, but how he found the strength to return and lead again has been at
the core of much debate. Some say that he, too, saw a vision demanding his
return, but that merely raises the interesting fact that Drummond was never
quite as mystical as his daughter or her mother.
What then, led Drummond to return and strengthen the sense of spirituality his
daughter had instilled in his Clan? What possessed him to reclaim the Khanship
and remain there until the amazing age of 112? Perhaps we will never know,
but to the Nova Cats, it was like the natural closing of a circle of life, a positive
omen for the future of the Clan.
—Iridashi Hitomo, Signs and Portents: A Look at the Nova Cat, Luthien Press,
3109
Guided by visions, yet driven by Clan pragmatism. Led by the spirit and heart of a
strong warrior caste, yet embracing a level of trust in its lower castes almost unheard
of. Thus did the Nova Cat Clan grow and prosper during the Golden Century.
Together with the Sea Fox Clan, they would colonize several worlds in the Kerensky
Cluster, while their warriors would defend the Clan’s expanding holdings from Trials,
mostly fought against the Smoke Jaguars. The Cats’ desire for growth would
eventually push the Clan into the Crusader camp when the Great Debate about an
invasion of the Inner Sphere began, yet the Cats would wait over half a decade before
that vision of glory could be realized.
In part two of this four-part series on Clan Nova Cat, we’ll get a glimpse of the ways
of the Nova Cats, the visions and the traditions that bind them despite their seven-
decade divorce from their fellow children of Kerensky. Join us as we continue our
tour of the stars! I’m Bertram Habeas.
