Mackenzie Vickers (Wolf)

Mackenzie Vickers (born Wolf) is the son of Jaime Wolf and current Brigadier of the Wolf’s Dragoons mercenary unit. He is a man forged by mercenary life and the dual-allegiance of the Wolf’s Dragoons. A combination of events has led him to become the commander of the Wolf’s Dragoons, which he detached from the Clans after taking command from his father after a “civil war” within the Dragoon forces.

Early Life

Mackenzie Wolf was raised as part of the Dragoon Creche system in the Inner Sphere, where he learned the basics of military operation at the same time as reading, writing and mathematics. To prevent him from being looked with privilege, he was told to go by the name of Darnell Winningham instead of his real name between the ages of 8 to 20. At nine years old, “Darnell” was sent to the New Avalon Speech Institute along with a few other Dragoons children being sent to other medical facilities on New Avalon. All of these children avoided the treachery at New Delos and arguably saved Mackenzie’s life.

Mackenzie continued his life and training within the Dragoon Creche system. He finished his training with a makeshift Trial of Position, in which he tested as Warrior, defeating an Hermes with his Enforcer before being destroyed by a Centurion. He was assigned to the Dragoons’ Beta Regiment.

Military Career

Third and Fourth Succession War

“Darnell Winningham” served dutifully in the Dragoons, biding his time to raise through the ranks. He served with distinction in the Battle of Misery, gaining the rank of “Lieutenant First Class”. As a medium cavalry commander, Mackenzie primarily served as flanking units during the conflict and destroyed multiple Panthers and Jenners.

During the Battle of Crossing, Mackenzie Wolf worked tirelessly to keep his men in shape and his unit in combat order after the death of his commanding officer. Like most Dragoon pilots on Crossing, he was also injured but he made a good impression on one Natasha Kerensky.

Soldier of the Black Widow

After recovering from his injuries, like many of the survivors from Crossing he was inducted into the Black Widow Battalion. Natasha Kerensky herself wanted to train “Darnell” for future leadership roles, giving him more responsibilities than a normal officer at his level. Mackenzie reacted well to the added responsibilities, but he never “rose above” what was expected of him by Natasha Kerensky, being seen as a competent, reliable yet boring commanding officer.

Thankfully, even with this reputation, Mackenzie had made his mark and when Natasha Kerensky left the Wolf Dragoons, he was promoted to command the Black Widow Battalion and officially recognized by Jaime Wolf as his son and heir-apparent. Many in the Dragoons were not happy with this decision, as Mackenzie had not displayed the “necessary genius required” to lead the unit like his father (or Kerensky) had. This lack of popularity amongst some of the troops led Mackenzie Wolf to try and show greater acts of courage and devotion to serving the unit.

Clan Invasion

Mackenzie Wolf had been promoted to Colonel by the time the Wolf Dragoons joined the fight against the Clan. During the “year of peace”, he served as a trainer and miliary advisor to various Inner Sphere leaders and commanders. His Black Widow company constantly served as Aggressors in training exercises and he started displaying of some military acumen which was definitely “unclan-like”. Before the Battle of Luthien, he and his team rescued a group of Smoke Jaguar soldiers that were disillusioned with the Clan way of life, integrating them and their knowledge of current Clan affairs within the Dragoons.

During the Battle of Luthien, Mackenzie Wolf served well and pushed both the Nova Cats and Smoke Jaguars to their limit. Again, the young Colonel showed some “unclan-like” behavior in his fighting which took some by surprise but won the day with fewer losses than expected. While many of the other commanders were decorated, Mackenzie refused additional rewards for his work on Luthien, passing them on to other officers under his command.

A trip to Bristol and betrayla

The Dragoons needed to recover after the Battle of Luthien and their manufacturing capabilities were not up to snuff to bring them back to 5 full regiments in the limited time they had. Against Jaime Wolf’s advice, Mackenzie took a team of Dragoon to go recover a cache of equipment which had been left on Bristol, in the periphery. Jaime feared that the cache might already have been recovered by the Clans or potentially worse, and he didn’t want to send his son on such a dangerous mission. To protect him, Jaime assigned a team of the new Elemental task force to protect him.

This was the biggest mistake Jaime made. The leader of this elemental team was one Elson Novacat, a bondsman which had joined the Wolves and had political aspirations within the unit. While laying low during most of the trip to the periphery, Elson abandoned Mackenzie and his squad of marines in a firefight in an unidentified McKenna-class WarShip. Elson believed that the far superior force that they were facing would annihilate Wolf and his allies while he fled with 3 dropships full of Star League-era battlemechs.

A matter of luck

Mackenzie likely would have died if not for an important fact: the people they were in a firefight with were actually their friends. Unknowingly, a team of archeologist from Interstellar Expeditions had been given a contract by ComStar to investigate Bristol, along with a security team hired from Snord’s Irregular. During the firefight, Mackenzie started stuttering like he sometimes did during tense situations, and this was recognized by the opposing commander, which happened to be Rhonda Snord. Both sides stopped shooting at each other immediately.

Snord, IE and what was left of the Wolf’s Dragoon forces quickly came to an agreement to start reactivating the equipment which was left behind. Mackenzie did not feel the need to chase Elson Novacat, as he expected him to have left to get reinforcements. After a few days working with IE and not getting any report from his officer, he realized that Elson had left him to die. This soured Colonel Wolf to the “clan way of life” even more than he had before, swearing that he would no longer abide by it.

A less than triumphant return

Unfortunately for Colonel Wolf, the fact IE was the one who recovered the remaining warships and mothballed equipment meant that their sponsor, ComStar, would get the bulk of the reward. Three warships, including the Zughoffer Weir McKenna-class and a pair of Lola-class destroyers, were earmarked for use by Anastasius Focht on their way back to Terra. Mackenzie met with the Precentor Martial after landing, learning of the ongoing “Dragoon Civil War”. Enraged, the Colonel asked what ship Focht could afford him to go to Outreach. In a stunning turn of event, Primus Sharilar Mori said that the only ship with a full LF-battery at the ready was the Zughoffer Weir, which was now carrying 6 dropships of mint condition ComStar battlemechs which unfortunately had no pilots.

Mackenzie did not understand the implications of what was said at first. Precentor Martial Focht handed a data tablet to Colonel Wolf with a contract for service for the Wolf’s Dragoons in the name of Com Guards. In exchange for the warship, the Dragoons would serve Com Guards first in any contract going forward, along with signing a 10 year contract to train, develop and expand the Com Guards. Weighing his options, Mackenzie Wolf agreed as long as an escape clause was added to the contract in case ComStar turned their back on the Inner Sphere, which was agreed by the First Circuit.

A traitor’s end

The battle on Outreach between Alpin Wolf and the Dragoon “loyalist” was ongoing when the newly rechristened Long Knives jumped into the system. Everyone stopped immediately and watched in horror as a Star League era battleship slowly crawled toward Outreach. Mackenzie Vickers (having taken his grandfather’s bloodname to cut away from his Clan background) announced his return as the ship came into orbit and started unloading its dropships, with the equivalent of a regiment worth of newly recruited mercenaries.

Colonel Vickers’s first order of action was to locate Elson Novacat and ruthlessly kill him. Piloting a Marauder IIC, the Colonel vaporized Elson’s Battle Armor with an ER PPC before laying waste to his command center. The loyalists came out of hiding from “the Outback” to support the “heir to the Dragoons” and pushed back Alpin Wolf’s men until they surrendered. Jaime Wolf welcomed his son back, but Mackenzie said that it really was time for him to retire. This angered some of the Wolf loyalists, but Jaime understood what his son meant and said he would be happy to go live a peaceful life for a few more years.

Brigadier of the Wolf’s Dragoon

There was uncertainty amongst the Dragoons as Mackenzie took control. His first order of business was dispossessing his son Alpin and banning him from command, naming his daughter Shauna as his heir. Maeve Vickers (no longer Wolf) was given a promotion to Colonel and put in charge of Delta Regiment. All aspects of “Clan background” was purged from the Dragoons, with even bondsmen and women being asked to adopt “regular last names” to do a clear cut from their Clan origins. Those who disagreed were asked to leave the service of the Dragoon dispossessed, as their ‘mechs belonged to the Wolf’s Dragoon.

Mackenzie Vickers started a recruitment drive on Outreach to replace their losses, prioritizing MechWarriors with experience fighting against the Clans. Already by the beginning of 3055, the Dragoons were being affected to train new Com Guards units and one of the regiments was to be deployed, in rotation, in the remnants of the Free Rasalhague Republic. By 3057 and the start of the Fifth Succession War, one Dragoon regiment always remained on Outreach while all the others were deployed on the Rasalhague front, both in training capacity and to prevent raids from Clan elements.

Operation GUERRERO

Thomas Marik attempted to hire the Wolf’s Dragoons for Operation GUERRERO, but he wasn’t aware of the now longstanding contract between the Dragoons and ComStar. This refusal was taken poorly by both House Liao and House Marik, but Brigadier Vickers explained that he was not going to be supporting the Federated Commonwealth either, if everyone left Outreach alone.

While this angered Stephen Davion, leaving Outreach as a neutral zone allowed for prisoner exchange and information trade between the participants in Operation GUERRERO and the nascent Fifth Succession War. Outreach’s military production was concentrated in providing equipment to the Wolf’s Dragoons, but surplus was sold to any mercenary units which came to the world under the banner of peace.

Rasalhague’s Breakthrough

Command of Operation AEGIR by the KungsArme was given to Mackenzie Vickers, as Anastasius Focht did not want to openly antagonize the Clans during the period of Truce he had won at Tukayyid. With 8 active Rasalhague regiments, 4 Wolf’s Dragoons Regiments and elements from various other mercenary outfits (including a regiment from Snord’s Irregulars), Brigadier Vickers and Överbefälhavare Christian Mansdottir began moving into Clan territory to reclaim worlds for the Republic.

While in ground operation things were shared evenly between the two parties, it was apparent that the WarShip assets of the Dragoons were a game changer. Clan garrisons could resist attacks, but they were cut off from supplies by the space superiority provided by the Dragoons under Vickers’ command. The limited WarShip engagements which came from this were decided mostly through the show of force between the three powers rather than coming to blows.

At the end of the operation, which had been successful beyond the wildest dreams of the Republic, Brigadier Vickers once again refused to receive any rewards or awards, letting his subordinates receive them. Mackenzie knew these victories could be very short as the Clans were getting ready for a new wave of invasion at the end of the Truce of Tukayyid.

Personal Life

Mackenzie had a hard life since his youth, having been forced to go under the alias Darnell Winningham to deflect from people knowing his identity until he was 20. Growing up, “Darnell” was kept into the Dragoon’s own creche system and trained in Clan ways even though they were outside Clan space. He was diagnosed with a speech impediment, which still appears when he is stressed or tired, which is part of why Jaime Wolf was not sure about his son’s capabilities to lead the Dragoons. He resented his father for this until Jaime Wolf’s retirement from command.

Mackenzie Vickers enjoys bodybuilding and Tae Kwon Do, in which he holds a black belt. He married Katherine Moran (born Wolf), with whom he had 2 children, Alpin and Shauna. After Alpin’s silliness during the Dragoon Civil War, Mackenzie disinherited him and banished him from Outreach. While his daughter Shauna is heir-designate, many believe Maeve Vickers is now the presumptive second in line to take command of the Dragoons.

Mackenzie Vickers’s BattleMech

Throughout his career, Mackenzie piloted a variety of BattleMechs. He started out in a customized Enforcer before moving on to one of the newly minted Marauder II. After his “return from the dead”, he began piloting a Marauder IIC.

Clan Watch Report

“Mackenzie Wolf would not have been a problem for the Clans if things had continued in the same way as we expected. A middling MechWarrior and a competent, yet boring, commander, he would have led the Wolf’s Dragoons well enough but his lack of charisma and leadership would have led to a break in the unit. Elson Novacat’s attempt on his life changed him, and when he came back to Outreach, he showed incredible resolve and determination. While still only a competent commander, he was now able to take drastic decisions and forced the door closed on Clan integration in the Wolf’s Dragoons.

It does not appear that Mackenzie Wolf has any real enmity towards the Clan way of life, but he realized that the Dragoons could not survive in the Inner Sphere ‘living on the edge’ of the two cultures. All bondsmen and women that the Dragoons had taken were forcefully made to adopt their genemonicker, while existing Dragoon pilots that used Clanmonickers were told to change it. Bidding and trialing were taken out of the equation in the Dragoons so Mackenzie could turn the unit into something closer to the classic Inner Sphere format.

Brigadier Vickers closeness to Anastasius Focht and Prince Victor Steiner-Davion is also of major concern to the Clan Watch. It is likely that the Dragoons will continue working both for the Federated Commonwealth and Com Guards for the time being.”