Ever see The Seven Samurai? Suppose that the heroes couldn't move on, because the bandits swore to return NEXT harvest time, or told another bunch of bandits, or ...
Obviously, the clan that makes a Dead Man their chieftain was already in big trouble. Perhaps the Orlanthi and Ernaldan leadership died in the catastrophy before this, and the next generation isn't nearly ready, yet. Or the Humakti in question isn't Onslaught, but just Josey Wales. Or perhaps the non-warrior Orlanthi thought that they can manipulate a novice leader more easily. Or ...
I expect that every case will be different. And probably countable, even without LM assistance. The only mostly Humakti clan that I have seen described on the web were the Mortimers, living on nearly unfarmable land among the Fronelan Orlanthi, who survived by breeding remittance men. And they were written up ages ago, when we still believed in silver pieces and merchants supplying markets.
Perhaps Humakt does have some leadership magic available. Makla Mann was a Humathi chieftain before meeting Arkat. What we see published are primarily the 1620 Sartar views, not the full panoply over time.
> War clans, it seems, but why do they want to be such? Even a war clan
> can't be 100% warriors, or they'll be dead a generation later.
Like the Spartan Equals class did? Or didn't, rather, even over several hundreds of years. Being a warrior doesn't mean that you are guaranteed the celibacy geasa. In fact, I expect that the Humakti would view breeding as a necessary form of recruiting, and soldier on :-)
As to provisioning, there are slave markets to supply thralls to work the fields, and neighbors to convince to hire their services, if they do not get a long term commitment from a tribe or state.
For that matter, to continue the Seven Samurai analogy, the farmers would not have to spend time in the warlike Orlanthi cults for protection, but could safely dedicate themselves to Barntar. Perhaps that is what happens, downplaying the Orlanthi cultural dislike of specialization.
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