Gu4rdles, a few wrong points there...
They do only become warriors after the trial, but they're still warrior-caste, unless they can't prove their worth.
Trueborns have 2 parents. The Bloodname is always from the female parent, so Aidan's mother was a Pryde. Ter Roshak knew Aidan's father or something and blah blah.
If a mech cadet defeats 1 opponent in their trial, they become a mechwarrior. if they defeat 2, star commander; 3 is star captain. Natasha Kerensky is the only person to ever have 4 kills in an initial ToP, and she became Star Colonel.
Trueborn sibkin can be full-blood siblings, half-blood, or even not related at all depending on the circumstances (i.e. the sibko was trimmed down a lot early on and merged with another sibko). Trueborns don't really give a rat's ass though, becuase, to them, there is no such thing as family. No fathers, no mothers, no brothers, no sisters, just The Clan.
Freeborns can be ranking officers, but there's a lot of prejudice against it. They *can* and *do* contribute to the genepool though; if a freebirth is from a warrior line (say a Truscott-line warrior dropped to the scientist caste, had a child with another trueborn, or even a regular scientist, and raised that child to be a warrior and put them into a freeborn sibko and so on) gets through the grand meleé held for the 16th (i think it's 16th) position available for the Trial of Bloodright and then wins the final battle, said freebirth would hold a bloodname and pass their genes on to the next batch of trueborns. This keeps the trueborn genepool from stagnating.
