Fergus Aonghas

Fergus Aonghas has never once softened an objection for the room, and the Ridgemoot has largely stopped expecting him to. He is the head most likely to say plainly what the other clan heads leave implied, which has made him useful to reporters and exhausting to mediators in roughly equal measure.

Clan Aonghas holds the eastern granite highlands and the bulk of Aethelrock's mining claims, the territory hardest on both land and body — a fact Fergus wears as identity rather than complaint. Aonghas territory borders Clan Ceridwen's plateau directly, close enough that the Ridgemoot itself convenes on the shared border between the two, which means Fergus has watched Rhiannon's fold-relay station operate at closer range than any other clan head, and has opinions about what he's seen that he does not keep to himself.

Known History

• Took the headship of Clan Aonghas in 2819 UCSD, following a mining-claim dispute that killed his predecessor's standing at the Ridgemoot rather than the predecessor himself.
• Has sat at every Ridgemoot session since Rhiannon Ceridwen logged first contact in 2824 UCSD, and has raised a formal objection at each one.
• Publicly stated, at the 2825 UCSD Ridgemoot, that Ceridwen "apologises in the same breath as refusing to stop" — a line other clan heads have since borrowed without attribution.
• Maintains Aonghas's independent militia at strength disproportionate to the clan's population, citing the exposed highland border as justification.

Character Notes

Fergus's objection to Rhiannon is not, in his own account, about the fact of contact with the Solar System — he has said more than once that he'd have done the same in her position, and does not entirely mean it as a compliment to himself. His actual grievance is procedural and, unlike Cormac Dubhghlas's, not particularly sentimental about the old rotation: he simply does not trust any arrangement that lets one clan's convenience become the whole world's policy by accident, and points out that the next clan to occupy inconvenient ground could just as easily make the same call he'd object to twice as loudly.

He is the Ridgemoot's most reliable ally for anyone who needs a blunt read on the room, and its least reliable ally for anyone who needs the read delivered gently. Clan Bryneth's head has called him "the only honest man on this world who is somehow always the last one to admit he agrees with you."

See also: Aethelrock, Rhiannon Ceridwen, The Celtic Union of Planets.