Idris Bryneth

Idris Bryneth leads the smallest clan on Aethelrock and has never once let anyone at the Ridgemoot forget that smallest is not the same as weakest. Bryneth territory could be walked end to end in a fortnight. Nobody has tried it without an escort in living memory.

Clan Bryneth holds the northern high country, thin ground and thinner population set against every other clan's territory, defended out of proportion to its size since the founding generation first drew the border and dared anyone to test it. Idris did not invent that posture; he inherited a clan built on it, and has spent his headship arguing that Bryneth's disproportionate defence is the reason the clan survived at all, not a relic to be relaxed now that the Union is watching.

Known History

• Took the headship of Clan Bryneth in 2815 UCSD, the youngest clan head on Aethelrock at the time of his inheritance.
• Opposed Rhiannon Ceridwen's unilateral contact with Star Rangers survey traffic in 2824 UCSD on different grounds than Cormac Dubhghlas — not procedure, but exposure, arguing that any relationship with an outside power concentrates risk on whichever clan holds the seat that year.
• Has never formally allied with either the pro-rotation or pro-Ceridwen factions at the Ridgemoot, voting issue by issue.
• Maintains Bryneth's border patrols at a strength the clan's population does not obviously justify, a standing point of quiet friction with Fergus Aonghas, whose highland militia is larger in absolute terms but smaller relative to Aonghas's population.

Character Notes

Idris trusts institutions less than any other clan head on Aethelrock, the Ridgemoot included, and says so without apparent discomfort. His objection to Rhiannon's first contact was never really about the rotation schedule; it was about the precedent that any single clan's exposure to an outside power becomes the whole world's exposure, whether the other four clans consented to that risk or not. He has made the same argument, with less patience, about full Union integration generally, and is the clan head most often credited — or blamed — for the Union's information-sharing agreement with the Survey Corps staying no wider than it currently is.

He respects Fergus Aonghas more than he agrees with him, and has said as much: "the only honest man on this world who is somehow always the last one to admit he agrees with you." Whether he means that as praise depends, by his own account, on the week.

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