Peter Metcalfe
>Why on earth should the maximum size of the tribe collapse
>so drastically? Why should it even collapse at all?
In short: Finances and Taxation.
A king needs to collect revenues from his tribe, and before the Orlanth Rex structure the priests did channel the financial flow to the kings. (Of course they extracted their own share, too.)
>It is at odds with RW history in which changes in political
>structures are not accompanied by drastic size reduction.
The fall of empires usually results in smaller units. When the Danish royal power was broken by Charlemagne, minuscule kings and kingdoms flowered all over Scandinavia, leading into the Viking Age.
>And given that once the side-effect was known, AFAIK most
>Orlanthi kings would prefer to give up Rex as it's much
>better being a weak king of a sprawling tribe than to be
>a strong king with less than a dozen clans to his name.
They still can become warlords of a confederation, but this usually collapses when the strong leader disappears. The lasting character of the Dragon Pass kingdoms is a tribute to their exceptional founders...
>And why on earth do unnaturally large tribes have to be
>the result of "foreign influences"? Try as I can, I can't
>credit the Orlanthi with no capacity for innovation
>whatsoever.
They just tossed overboard their own development thanks to Alakoring's intervention against the priesthood's collective entity (wyter-euivalent?) Drang the Diamond Storm Dragon.
>>>there's little difference in the magics of Orlanthdar
>>>and Orlanth Rex
>>I checked and didn't find any "command" among the Dar magics. Rex'
>>"Authority" is different enough for me.
>i.e. little difference as I just said.
Peter's priorities are different from mine, as usual.
>Certainly not large
>enough to warrant a decimation in tribal sizes that Joerg
>thinks has occurred.
Let me put it otherwise - Greg said that to maintain organisational structures larger than say the Colymar tribe (which is about double the size of most other Quivini tribes) they usually adopt/conquer/steal some power from outsider cultures.
Peter seems to think that I invented this reduction in size. I didn't.
>Given that Rex worship is not universal
>among the Heortling tribes (TR p246 only states that Rex's
>worship is "usual"), at least a couple of modern Sartarite
>tribes will not worship Rex. Yet they are all the same size...
Among other factors, this may be due to limited space for expansion.
BTW, the Tarshite tribes under Lunar influence are a lot larger.
>>>Also problematic
>>>is that Lankst, the home of Alakoring, is a large tribe
>>>of the sort that Alakoring was supposed to have eliminated.
>>Lankst is known as the Confederation of Jofrain. The tribe is a
>>temporary alliance.
>So why can't the Orgavaltes be a similar conglomeration but
>longer lasting in scope?
Because there is a huge gap between a temporary alliance and a lasting supra-organisation. The Quivini confederation, after 105 years of rule by the Sartar dynasty, still is about to fly apart now that the royal house has gone. Tarsh's dynastic breaks resulted in violent civil war and significant portions breaking off, which had to be forcibly conquered to return to the fold of Tarsh.
The Orgorvaltes maintained a "tribal" identity over a period (sequence of Ages) comparable only to the Hendreiki _nation_ (to avoid the misleading term tribe).
>>>IMO a better interpretation would be to distinguish between
>>>the tribes as groupings of clans on one hand (i.e. Colymar,
>>>Torkani and Vantaros) and the tribes as an alternative to
>>>kingdoms (Tarsh, Aggar, Heortland, and Lankst).
>>I have done so all the time, by calling groupings of clans "tribes" and
>>confederations of such tribes "tribal confederations". We know different
>>levels of kings to lead these, that's why I used different terms for
>>these past uses of "tribes".
>But you think that the Orgavaltes (for example) are the same
>kind of tribe (grouping of clans) as the Torkani,
No, I do not. The Torkani clearly aren't organized the same way the Imperial Age Orgorvaltes were. This interpretation is a non sequitur.
>If on the other hand, the Orlanthi have an extremely loose
>definitions for tribes, kingdoms and confederations that
>are capable of blurring into each other (like for example
>our republic and democracy) and allow them to have a
>good deal of creativity when it comes to devising supra-
>clan structures (rather than chant "foreign influences"),
>then the need for drastic tribal size reductions disappears
>entirely.
The "chant" is a rendering of information from the source, i.e. Greg. I was told it happened.
However, if the Orlanthi definitions are so loose, why do you object to my use of other terms? Is anything Joerg says wrong? ;-)
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