The 7 Clans

Lore & Background

When the 100 crash-land in a lush, green landscape, the assumption that Earth was a dead, irradiated wasteland shatters. The surface is not only alive—it is inhabited. The 7 Clans are the descendants of those who survived the nuclear war in scattered, isolated communities, each developing its own customs, territory, and survival methods. They know nothing of the sky city, of the artificial gravity, of the political machinations that kept the 100 in orbit for ninety-seven years. To them, the 100 are strange, metal-wearing invaders who fell from the sky and now demand land they have already claimed.

Each clan operates under its own elder or leader and governs through a mix of spiritual ritual and practical law. The Mountain Men, for instance, are fiercely territorial and view outsiders as threats to be eliminated. The Reapers are raiders who strike without warning, taking what they need and leaving destruction in their wake. Other clans the 100 encounter have their own customs, but a common thread runs through all seven: a deep, almost sacred relationship with the land, a rejection of the old world's technology, and a code of honor that is alien and often lethal to the 100's sky-city upbringing.

The clans' understanding of the 100 shifts over time. What begins as a blood trial—a ritual in which outsiders must prove their worth or be killed—evolves into uneasy alliances, betrayals, and, in some cases, genuine kinship. The 100, in turn, are forced to confront the fact that the world they were told was dead is not only alive but is home to people who have built something of their own, something the sky city's rigid hierarchy never could.

In Their Own Story

The fire was the first thing Clarke noticed. Not the sky, not the green, not the impossible blue of a sun she had only seen through a viewport. The fire. A small one, cupped in the palms of a young man with dirt under his nails and a spear across his back. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The flame said everything: *we are here, we have been here, and this land is ours.*

Behind him, the trees closed in like a wall. The air smelled of woodsmoke and wet earth and something older—something that had no name in the sky city's vocabulary. Clarke's group stood in a clearing that should not have existed, their metal still humming with residual charge, their boots sinking into soil that had no business being soft.

The young man set the fire down. He looked at the 100 the way you look at a storm that has no business being on your side of the mountain. Then he turned and walked back into the green, and the trees swallowed him whole, and the fire went out, and the silence that followed was the loudest thing Clarke had ever heard.

Reader's Guide

RECORD OF THE GROUND-KEEPERS, TERRITORY LEDGER (reconstructed)

The Seven are what we call ourselves. Not a name we chose—names are for the sky-fallers, who need to point at each other and say *you are this, you are that*. We are the Mountain. We are the River. We are the ones who walk the Reaping path. We are the ones who keep the fire when the sky goes dark. We are seven, and we have always been seven, and the sky-fallers will learn this or they will learn the blade.

What is confirmed: the sky-fallers came in Season One of their telling. They fell from a metal sky. They were afraid. They killed first, then asked questions. The Mountain Men did not negotiate. The Reaping path was walked, and blood was paid, and the trial was done. This is not myth. This is the ledger.

What is uncertain: the sky-fallers speak of a city above, of a war that ended the world. We do not know if this is true. We know the land was green before they fell. We know the fires were not ours. Whether the sky-fallers' war made the world or merely ended the old one is a question we have not yet answered, and perhaps it is not ours to answer.

What the elders say: the sky-fallers are not enemies. They are not friends. They are a question the land has not finished asking. We will answer when the land is ready. Not before.

— Transcribed from the Territory Ledger, author unknown, date unknown. Fan reconstruction; not an official text.

Did You Know?

• The 100's entire premise in Season 1 rests on the revelation that Earth is habitable, directly contradicting the sky city's decades-long narrative that the surface was destroyed.
• The Mountain Men and the Reapers are two of the most prominently named clans the 100 encounter, each with a distinct relationship to outsiders—territorial hostility and opportunistic raiding, respectively.
• The clans operate without any electronic technology, relying on fire, foraged materials, and hand-forged or natural weapons, representing a full technological reset from the sky city's advanced infrastructure.
• The 'trial of blood' or blood ritual the 100 must undergo is a recurring cultural motif across the clans, serving as both a test of worth and a boundary between the ground-dwellers and outsiders.