Agreed you'd want to stick together for a little while to defend your possessions at least 5 years and rebuild your or gather even more strength for a partition. There could be four possible Clans here just from the Mandrill split. Ice Hellion of course would be one of the Clans new resources but don't forget Smoke Jaguar and Mongoose bloodnames
Payne merging with Beyl-Grant. I envision them keeping the Fire Mandrill name with the others breaking off to form new Clans.
Sainze is unlikely to merge with any of the other Kindraa but could use Ice Hellion resources to build their own Clan, I like the sound of Clan Frost Dragon with its capital on Hector. Faraday-Tanaga likely merge with Kline and Mattila-Carrol merge with Mick-Kreese creating the other two power blocs forming new Clans.
Payne were part of the coalition dominating the clan while Beyl-Grant were on the thin end. Sainze were left too weak to go it alone - they lost their warship and half their ground forces fighting on Hector, then got backstabbed economically by the new Khan. I do like the name Clan Frost Dragon though.
Overall the balance of combat power has the strongest Kindraa as the Hellions and then Kline, Faraday-Tanaga, Payne, Mick-Kreese, Mattila-Carrol, Beyl-Grant and Sainze.
Beyl-Grant and Sainze are the two Kindraa that wound up as the big losers out of the Fire Mandrills. Faraday-Tanaga and Mick-Kreese on the other hand were the ones that made out best from looting the Ice Hellions, thus them forming a loose alliance. Those are the polar ends of the expanded Clan Fire Mandrill with the other four Kindraa holding the centre.
Granted, given some time it could and likely would shake out into different alliances and feuds within the Clan.
Most probably the next fractures would come over internal squabbling over resources, coupled with defeat in the Great Refusal. If the Khan doesn't die in action, she's probably at least dethroned as a result. Payne, Kline and Beyl-Grant are the warden Kindraa with Mattila-Carrol wavering between the two. This doesn't bode well for the stability of the middle-ground Kindraa alliance since that leaves them divided.
(Edit: sorry, mis-read and thought you were suggesting a Payne & Mick-Kreese match-up which you weren't actually)Payne and Mick-Kreese complement each other well on the battlefield but they're not otherwise inclined to ally - in fact they're quite different. Faraday-Tanaga as fellow Crusaders, already not dominated by a single bloodname house with a strong but not exclusive battlemech focus are probably a better match for Mick-Kreese. They were also the only Kindraa with troops garrisoning Atreus before the war, suggesting they both have holdings there, so there's a good chance they could hang onto it. It's not the most welcoming of worlds and the population's only about 8 million but it's somewhere to start from. If they can keep a slice of the enclaves on Shadow too - a much more welcoming world with a population of 42 million - then so much the better. If they build up to the point of fielding, two frontline galaxies and a secondline galaxy then combined with their total of five warships that would give them a good start. If they managed to get some of the Jaguar and Mongoose genetic data I could see them tapping that and creating... damn, I suck at names. Mist Mongoose? Smoke Gorilla? Snake Eater?
I'm sure Sainze would like to be a clan in their own right but they're second only to Payne in elevating their titular Bloodname over all others. They'd need to change on that front before they could recruit seriously within the Mandrills... or outside that. Of course, they've had a pretty serious shock and might well be re-evaluating their policies (and getting their hate on for the backstabbing other Kindraa). Of course if another Kindraa is looking wobbly and Sainze manages to retain the resources of Hector mostly exclusively, then they've got 44 million civilians which translates to plenty to offer a Kindraa willing to compromise themselves for some support. They might also pick up some Hellions through inheriting sibkos still on Hector. The most likely Kindraa to need alliances are Mattila-Carrol and fellow Crusaders and like Sainze, a Kindraa with a broad-base of bloodline types.
If Sainze can learn to share at least some power then a merger with them it could lead to Clan Frost Dragon.
This would leave the Hellions, Kindraa Kline, Kindra Beyl-Grant and Kindraa Payne inside Clan Fire Mandrill - all fairly strong, still retaining a modest warship fleet and a touman that might not get swallowed at the first opportunity. Kindraa Kline is fairly good at co-operation and since the Payne bloodname is in trouble, their Kindraa may not hold together if there's real pressure to fit in with the rest of the Clan. The Hellions might be happy to stay as dominant inside this or want to break loose and revive their former clan.
But all this would need decent build-up or at least another Clan willing to 'sponsor' the break-aways until they were strong enough to not be absorbed by larger Clans.
