Right, but it's a religious obligation. Shouldn't every high caste Scorpion, or at least every pious Scorpion that can find a berth based on whichever caste is the bottleneck, be doing a term as seeker? That's the most trustworthy segment of the warrior, scientist (assuming chroniclers are from that caste), and technician classes all going on multi-year research sabbaticals. Combined with the short functional lifespan of a Clan warrior that's a lot more than the equivalent of one star down with the flu at a time.Seekers are like 1 lead warrior, maybe some other warriors but maybe not, his chronicler, and a few techs and other support personnel. The Scorpions can certainly spare a handful of guys to run around looking for some SL era junk, it's not like the Empire will collapse if a star of warriors gets the flu and is out of action.
And these Scorpions aren't around to influence the direction of the empire allowing the Nueva Castilians to outnumber real Scorpions those not currently acting as seekers by a greater margin accelerating the collapse of Clan culture.
The Yuan stopped being Mongols before they were deposed. The same should happen to the Clanners in mixed societies where they are the smaller population, and Seekers reduce the population of loyal and true Scorpions. This accelerates the destruction of the Clan at a rate proportional to the ratio between their population and the population absorbing them.
Most of the jumpships of the conquered nations need to be there to keep the economy running. Seekers going out need dedicated jumpships to travel outside the trade network of the conquered nations. Those jumpships are gone for years and there should be not single digit jumpships, but one jumpship per probably 1-5 pious warriors or scientists (whichever is the tighter bottleneck, and assuming that seekers aren't going out more than a star per destination) at some point in their professional lifespan and they're gone for months or years, same as the people.Probably not. A few guys in a Leopard or something small hitching a ride on a jumpship is going to mean the clan is down one small dropship and take up one collar on jumpship, I don't think that will really impede the clans operations overall. Even if thry have a dedicated jumpship, I don't know how much that would impact them. Particularly as they nations thry conquered had jumpships of thier own and the clans would have captured them during the war, so giving some jumpships out to the seekers would at worst reduce the number of surplus jumpships the clans have outside the ones in thier own inventory.
Imagine what would happen to the Draconis Combine if every Samurai from the Azami worlds requisitioned a jumpship and dropship for the Haj at some point in his adult life. That's about what should happen to the Scorpion Empire. Proportionately fewer expeditions since there can be some sharing, but each expedition is longer since the Azami worlds are pretty close to Sol while most Star League sites are very far from the Scorpion Empire.
On that we're fully agreed. For all their implausible worldbuilding they were a good excuse plot for gaming group sized giant robot battles until the idiots decided they should flip all of the tables instead of just the one corporate HQ demanded be flipped.It was stupid, just like everything else done with the Clan from War of Reaving on.