Tribal sizes

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:27:16 +1300


Joerg Baumgartner:

> >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.

Since this sort of thing didn't happen in the real world, I find it difficult to see why it should happen for the Orlanthi.

>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.)

A supposition for which there is no evidence. If anything, the Orlanth Rex cult would have allowed the Kings to collect revenue from the Priests whereas they couldn't before.

> >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.

Yes, but we are not talking about the "fall of empires", we are talking about the changes in relative power between the King and the Priests. A more appropriate analogy IMO would be the Reformation - this enhanced the power of many Kings and Princes viz-a-viz their clergy yet the size of their holdings did not collapse.

> >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.

But if they give up Rex, then their tribe will not collapse when the strong leader disappears. So why wasn't this done? That there was no real change in tribal sizes seems to me a far more likely solution.

> >>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.

Considering that the effect of the difference is supposed to be that the tribal sizes came crashing down and could never recover their former glory (without "foreign influences") just because the tribal Kings now know how to "Weaken Priestly Authority" seems more than a little barking to me.

> >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.

That Orlanthi _usually_ adopt some outside power is quite a different thing from saying that Orlanthi _always_ adopt some outside power to build a Big Tribe. It certainly doesn't prevent the Orlanthi from having no capacity for innovation which Joerg doesn't seem to think exists.

>Peter seems to think that I invented this reduction in size. I didn't.

The above Greg-paraphrase is not evidence of Massive Tribal Size reductions.

> >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.

Given the turbulent history of the Quivini tribes before Sartar came, I find this difficult to accept.

>BTW, the Tarshite tribes under Lunar influence are a lot larger.

They were a lot larger _before_ Lunar influence.

> >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.

There is? Evidence please. I don't see any meaningful difference between the Orgavaltes on one hand and the kingdoms of Tarsh and Sartar on the other. You mention violence in Tarsh and Sartar - I see no reason to assume that the Orgavaltes were free from internal unrest or didn't loose and gain bits of land and people from their neighbors.

>The Orgorvaltes maintained a "tribal" identity over a period
>(sequence of Ages) comparable only to the Hendreiki _nation_
>(to avoid the misleading term tribe).

The tribe term is not misleading. Lankst has a similarly long lasting continuity and maintaining a tribal identity is wholly compatible with the tribe going to pieces every now and then.

> >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.

No, it is not a non-sequitur. You think the Orgavaltes were the same type of tribe (being a grouping of clans) and that to explain the apparent disparity between the size of the Orgavaltes and the Torkani, you invoke Alakoring causing Massive Tribal Size Reductions. Simply by adopting a looser usage of tribe, one avoids having anything of the kind.

>The "chant" [of foreign influences] is a rendering of information
>from the source, i.e. Greg. I was told it happened.

If the information from the source is accurately paraphrased above, then it looks to me that you've simply taken a comment from Greg and bent it out of proportion in trying to derive a cosmic truth.

>However, if the Orlanthi definitions are so loose, why do you object
>to my use of other terms?

Because you define them rigidly without any room for error (e.g. the Hendreiki are not a tribe). And when problems with these definitions are pointed out, rather than relax them, you make further hypotheses which further strain credibility.

--Peter Metcalfe

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