> >Orlanthi tribal kings and clan
> >chieftains. How practical is it to be both?
> I was unaware that there was a distinction between the two - are they not
> just different words for the same thing?
The basic Orlanthi grouping is the clan. This is headed by a chieftain. In most Orlanthi areas, clans group together into tribes, led by a king. In a few areas, tribes join into confederations or kingdoms, ruled by a king, or, in the most famous example (Sartar), Prince. I highly recommend the orange Glorantha box (which I believe is also the source of the Outer Atomic Explorers).
Neil wrote
> OK, I admit defeat. I can't seem to find any resources that give me
> _numbers_ of animals herded by nomaic herder type people. Can anyone
> help?
I don't have a complete answer (I'm working on the same myself), but I've
compiled some information at
<http://www.pensee.com/dunham/facts/animals.html>. A Pastoral Maasai family
(8-10 people) owns 125-140 head of cattle, of which 57-60% are adult milch
cows on which the family depends for daily subsistence. The Maasai live in
the Great Rift Valley, and do nothing but herd. They're supposed to be one
of the richest (in livestock) people in Africa, so I imagine anyone else
would have fewer. I still need to look up the climate of Kenya and
Tanzania, but I suspect it's not un-Praxlike.
My tentative value for cows per person in East Ralios is between 2.5 and 5 (in some of Greg Stafford's notes, he says an average clan moving to Dragon Pass in the 1300s has 5 cows per person, but these are clans on the move and may not be typical), pending further research.
Nick Brooke confirmed what I already assumed, that conflict of interest is no reason not to be both clan chieftain and tribal king. What I still wonder about is the difficulty of performing both duties, simply in terms of time or geographic demands. It's possible that the clan ring takes over, or a specific delegate, when the chieftain is off doing tribal business.
Perhaps a better way to ask the question would be, what exactly are the duties of both positions, and how time-consuming? I'd figured that it would be Rune-level-like, and take 90% of your time. Now, certainly a significant part of the clan chieftain's job is dealing with the tribal king, and that's not a problem if you're both. Likewise, the king has to spend a certain amount of time keeping each clan happy. But there's still duties like resolving disputes, presiding over ceremonies, opening markets, and of course supervising the master brewer and master smith.
David Dunham Pensee Corporation dunham_at_pensee.com Voice/Fax: 206 783 7404 http://www.pensee.com/dunham/ NO ZUKES! Stop zucchini proliferation.
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