At 12:26 PM -0800 3/8/02, John Hughes wrote:
>I believe that there are no hard and fast rules for steads and bloodlines.
>There are single bloodline steads, there are smallish steads with three or
>four major bloodlines. You just need to rationalise the history.
>(Of course, if your clan history extends back beyond the dawn, this may not
>be useful).
>
>I find it most helpful to think of bloodlines as environmental adaptations
>as much as kinship groups. They split and merge according to the fortunes of
>the steads and the resources they can exploit as much as through kin
>quarrels or family growth. A bloodline is simply an extended family, but it
>is also the unit of work. The steads are organised communally and clan
>resources are given by the chief into a bloodline's keeping. They are
>remarkably fluid in terms of merging, splitting and branching out. While
>most largish bloodlines will have a mixture of cottars and carls, rich
>cattle husbands and poor sheep herders, part of their herds (and therefore
>riches) are communal.
I absolutely agree with this. However, as I said before, if the
point is to be "generic" and fit into the TR/ST description as closely as
possible, we should assume a pretty average make up of CLAN and BLOODLINE.
Or am I being too mechanistic?
Peter Larsen