Re: Clan Ring

From: Simon Phipp <soltakss_at_...>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:49:51 +0100 (BST)


Steve Honey:

> However I'm struggling with the reluctance to have Clan Rings.

Clan Rings are OK, City Rings are iffy, unless Whitewall has more of a Sartarite feel, even though it isn't in Sartar (or is it, I forget).

I like the idea of the Clans having their Rings in the Clan centres, so anyone with a Clan dispute must go back to the Clan centre and speak to the Ring there. Why should there be a separate Clan Ring in Whitewall?

Or are the Clan centres in Whitewall itself?

If the clans accept that they can have different Rings in different places, then why not have a Ring for some important bloodline or stead somewhere else?

> In King of
> Satar it states "A clan ranges in size between 500 and 2000 people...with
> decision making centred in the clan ring..."
> ok so we have only part of a clan in each district so we only have the core
> group of 7 which would have been the inner ring and do away with the Clan
> ring
> of 20-30 members. This inner ring (and again this is from KoS) "The Clan
> Council is responsible for maintaining justice among its members. It is
> also
> responsible for negotiating with people who are outside the clan in such
> matters as
> justice, trade, war and obtaining wives for marriage."
> To ignore this part of Orlanthi culture is short changing people.

There would be a lot of tension between the actual Clan Ring and the Clan Ring at Whitewall. Some people may prefer to go to the actual Ring rather than the Whitewall one. I just can't see it working effectively. Sartar did it by changing the Ring Structure, so he had a specific City Ring with membership from certain Clans and Guilds, to keep checks and balances. He didn't have a number of Clan Rings all competing with each other to manage the City.

> Traditionally the inner ring members are chosen by the Chieftain from the
> outer ring, or in the case of WW the outer ring would be almost all clan
> members
> at WW. Using KoS again as reference we find there are 3 council patterns,
> Traditional, Lightbringer and Local ("Where the land is poor and the people
> are
> few...") with districts such as Shambleshur and Guilderinn adopting a
> "Local"
> variant, Dalewatch and Bullshur a "Traditional" ring and T'anerow and
> Whiteledge
> adopting a "Lightbringer" format. (Although the occupations of Dalewatch
> fit
> closer with that of the Traditional council than Guilderinn all it takes is
> to
> swop names around.) It does not matter that there is only a fraction of a
> clan at WW the members of that clan will revert to type and form the best
> approximation of what they are used to.

But just forming a Ring doesn't have any legal basis. A Ring has to have Clan Authority otherwise it is just a group of people discussing things.

Steve Honey:
> simon
> > Hence, I don't think that Whitewall should have a similar structure
> as it
> > predates Sartar and would have a more traditional structure. As to
> what that
> > structure should be, I haven't a clue.
>
> steve
> >sorry if I'm being thick but King of Sartar states that Whitewall
> was built by Tarkalor grandson of Sartar who died in 1582.
> Help I'm confused!

Is that right, I didn't realise - I thought it was a lot older and outside of Sartar.

Is it inside the Crossline? I haven't got my maps here and have always been unsure of the borders between Sartar and Heortland. Isn't Whitewall in Heortland?

Oliver Bernuetz:
> > steve
> > >sorry if I'm being thick but King of Sartar states that Whitewall
> > was built by Tarkalor grandson of Sartar who died in 1582.
> > Help I'm confused!
> > >
> Ah you missed that bit of the early discussion. WW was rebuilt/renovated
> by
> Tarkalor. It was originally built by Sestarto the Artist in the Dawn Age.
> The nice info on him seems to have buggered off somewhere though. Check
> out
> the new? Sestarto page on the Wiki site for the history of WW.

Oh, well that's OK then. I knew I was probably right, just for not the right reasons.

Donald Oddy:
(Me:)
> >Normally, in ancient times, people had little or no say in how they were
> >governed, leaving that to the King and his representatives. Even in
> >Glorantha, the Rings are not elected, merely appointed or have positions
> that
> >are filled by certain people, e.g. High Priestess of Ernalds. The people
> have
> >very little say in what goes on.
>
> I don't think that's true, the societies the Heortlings are based on
> (Celtic and Viking) did not have absolute monarchies. It's not a
> democracy as we know it today where every few years everyone gets to
> vote on which of a small number of choices is least unacceptable. It
> is however a system whereby a clan chief is chosen by the acclaim of
> a meeting which everyone can attend. Similarly the High Priestess of
> Ernalda is chosen by the priestess's as the best person to represent
> them on the ring. At the tribal level the clan representatives do the
> same to select a tribal chief and tribal ring. At all levels those
> who chose can change their minds and the leaders. So Broyan is
> reliant on the support of the clan leaders to retain his position.
> They're not going to kick him out just on a whim, especially not
> during the siege but they must be taken notice of and they in their
> turn must respond to the demands of their clans.

But normal clan members have little impact on what the Ring Members decide. They can corner the Ernalda Member and try to persuade her to put one point of view across, but they themselves have no say in the matter at all. In a Tribal Ring it is worse as the Ring Members will probably not know them at all, so wouldn't particularly listen to what they want to say.

It is different for important clan members as they have more influence. But normal people have very little.

Simon                                   

Powered by hypermail