> the clan is the basic unit of Orlanthi society
To digress entirely off the original point, I'm curious as to how people interpret statements such as the above. For David, it seems to mean that each clan must work as the whole of Orlanthi society in miniature, therefore laws apply to the components of clans in much the same way as they do between different tribes. (May or may not be an accurate impression.)
For me, it means almost exactly the opposite: the clan is a fundamental building block of society: within a clan, things function quite different than between two difference one. A clan has a status as a legal entity that smaller groupings do not: bloodlines, and families don't have common property as a clan does (at least de jure they don't, in practice they often might as well), they don't have formal leaders as a clan does, they can't 'federate' and 'unfederate' from larger groupings in the way clans can. For many purposes, the clan is the 'social atom' (and the legal one): some things aren't possible or meaningful at lower levels of organisation. (It's left as an exercise to a(nother) pedant as to whether the individual counts as a level of social organisation.)
At least for the Heortlings (or the Heortlings I have any familiarity with). YOMV...
Cheers,
Alex.
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