>Depends what you mean by 'know as individuals'. Recognise? I'd
>bet money on this. 'Orlanthi Everyone', at least. These are basically
>the people you deal with all the time. It'd be hard to never meet
>any significant number of them, and these are the people you bump
>into far, far more often than anyone from outside, so a degree of
>familiarity seems likely, if in some cases largely by association.
>"Yet another one of those shifty Lunar-lovers from _you-know-who's_
>lodge." Granted the geography is more dispersed than in a modern
>'village' of 1000 people, but equally the social structures are
>that much more closed: no commuting to work three valleys away,
>or whatever.
By 'know as individuals' I mean recognise, name and identify where they fit in the clan at a minimum. It wouldn't include those who you can vaguely identify as living in that stead up the river. I certainly don't know a thousand people that well and I don't think many people do. Remember clans only get together infrequently so there is little reason for you to know all the members of the stead at the other end of the tula. It's easier to identify a leader and associate the others with him or her.
>I don't believe that's so. Though the 'if you had one' is not a trivial
>antecedent, since I think by one means or another he's also less
>likely to have one. I think this is a just belabouring the socio-
>dynamic obvious, here: steads and bloodlines undergo population
>and economic booms and busts, and the two are strongly corrolated.
Why should a cottar be less likely to have four sons than a carl? We aren't talking about vast discrepancies of wealth here where only the rich can afford lots of children. And I don't believe the clan would allow a child to die just because the bloodline or family were too poor. Children are too valuable for that. If anything bloodline and stead economics are dependant on population changes - - the more children there are the more land that can be farmed and the richer they get. A loss of fertility or the deaths of too many children means land lying idle, herds untended and steads neglected.
>> A whole animal is a rather large gift and a lot of meat surpluses
>> will be hunted animals rather than domestic ones. Basically the
>> restriction is any produce normally consumed fresh.
>
>A whole cow isn't an unreasonably large gift from one whole stead
>to another entire stead. Other animals correspondingly less so,
>to belabour what _really is_ the obvious, sorry. ;-)
Depends how big a stead is, I suppose. The only whole animal I've seen in pieces was a pig and that provided enough meat to feed a family for months.
>But it doesn't follow that this follows the described procedure
>for a law suit. Indeed the implication is not, since as I've quoted,
>that section describes the 'typical' case as being between clans,
>whereas a page or so earlier, it's stated that "normal justice occurs
>within a clan, and concerns only its members", surely implying that
>'normal justice' is not, or at least need not be, the same as this
>later-described lawsuit procedure. If justice is dealt at a clan moot,
>then the lawsuit mechanism is essentially redundant, as the clan is
>completely sovereign and competent, whether in the person of a the chief,
>the ring, or the clan itself in a wapentak, can make any necessary
>'ruling', or a decision that would make one redundant.
While internal clan justice need not be the same as the described lawsuit mechanism, there is nothing which says it's different and I see no compelling reason for it to be.
>Ah, _that_ I agree with. To steal from David D., the correct
>answer to most crazy-sounding hypotheticals about what megalomaniac
>things a chief could, it would seem, 'legally' do, "A wise chief
>would not". (Which conversely implies to me that occassionally
>they do happen, as some chiefs are simply either very unwise, and
>do them, simply to be unseated (and doubtless murdered in his bed)
>shortly thereafter, or is abusing his position in a systematic way,
>but cunningly enough to get away with it. But these would be very
>much the exception.)
Why murder him? a more Orlanthi approach would be to accuse him of being unjust and dishonourable provoking a trial by combat.
>> I don't see a problem with communal property and can easily imagine
>> how it works in a group which is small enough for all the members
>> to relate to each other as individuals. Once the group gets bigger
>> I can't see how it works without some form of enforceable rules.
>
>Thus you can see why I don't think it works, or indeed ever existed,
>in Elkenval bloodlines. ;-)
What is specific about that clan? or are you suggesting that all Orlanthi bloodlines are too big for communal property to be manageable?
>> We're largely in agreement here, except for the idea that in a group
>> as large as a clan can avoid formalising the rules whereby disputes
>> between members are resolved.
>
>Well, there's always 'Obey chosen leaders', and 'no one can make you
>do anything', which between them cover everything, I think. ;-)
Surely those are a cause of disputes rather than an aid to resolving them.
>> It may be custom rather than law and
>> there are probably variations between clans but they will exist
>> simply to reduce the clan chief's work.
>
>It's not so much that there are customs exist to resolve the disputes,
>but the the way previous disputes were resolved _are_ the customs,
>as it were.
That's still the way a lot of English law is created - a judge makes a ruling on a particular case which becomes the basis for the future. Both law and customs are evolving things and while I can't imagine the Orlanthi being unduly bound by preceedent there will be a presumption that what was decided last time is the correct resolution.
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