Clan Wolf, The.

The Clan Wolf is one of the few surviving feudal houses of the Human Outreach. Founded on Lindisfarne (Tau Ceti IV) by the Lady Surveyor Trixy Linda of Wolf (see also Human Outreach — Folktales; The Madwoman of Lindisfarne) in 2133 ADT, it has survived basically unchanged to the present.

History.

During the period of preliminary survey of Lindisfarne, it was considered necessary to construct citadels to which the colonists could withdraw during the harsh winters, before suitable environmental control could be established. Trixy Wolfe, as she was then known, is supposed to have likened them to Mediaeval Castles, and then coerced the other surveyors into setting up a feudal society, where they would be the nobility. Though recent findings place the responsibility with Mark of Connors, it is likely that Ms. Wolfe supported him.

After nearly a century, while most of the noble houses had relinquished all but nominal sovereignty, Clan Wolf persisted in a firm and often cruel government. Attempts were made to depose the clan by force, but all were brutally crushed at Trixy's behest. These repressions caused the situation to deteriorate, until the eventually successful coup led by Matthew Hayward erupted.

The majority of the Clan, and the remainder of Clan Connors fled the world, to the HR 5568 system, where there was known to be a borderline habitable world, surveyed but not yet colonized. They arrived but a fortnight before the colony ships from earth, armed with the equipment that would subdue the world. They moved on again as soon as their task was done, their prior experience of a cold world no longer required, before those who feared tyrannical excesses could expel them.

They had tired of cold and wintry worlds. Warm and summery Luthien was their goal, seventy lites further from Sol, the news less than a year before passed to them alone the relays of the Web of Man. But though they fled, their infamy still remained. Those who had feared them claimed victory, that the Clan, guilty, had fled justice.

On Luthien, the Clan, among others, formed the Five Castles Combine, and the article on the Combine gives a more detailed history of this period. Suffice it to say that the eventual colonists challenged the Combine's right under the new Linkers' Guild to govern the world. Matthew Hayward's ghost seemed to rise to rally the forces of unrest against them there, and on Heartward, Toehold and Last Gasp.

Most recently Clan and Combine were resident on Wyvern, their seventh world. Their policy of intensive preservation of the planet was opposed by interests outside the Combine that preferred a more aggressive approach, and certain corporations are known to have supplied aid to certain paramilitary Haywardist groups, and have then gone on to buy heavily in Wyvern stocks.

As a result of the political pressure applied, the Clan has left Wyvern, and despite some minor frictions with the Linkers' Guild, have received sponsorship to settle Cimmaron, a world newly autonomous under the Guild. It is hoped that this change of policy, in migrating to a post-frontier planet will ease tensions and prevent further forced migrations.

Customs

Following Trixy Linda's ideal of a master-race the vast majority of the clan are female, ectogenic clones nipped to display silver hair and eyes, grey blood and skin. Within this pattern, only height and build vary ; it is difficult for an outsider easily to distinguish them. Their feudal past shows in the variety of ritualized titles and observances persisting to this day…